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THE STICKIT MINISTER 


AND SOME COMMON MEN 








THE STICKIT MINISTER PLOUGHING 


THE 


STICKIT MINISTER 

AND SOME COMMON MEN 


BY 

S.^"R. CROCKETT 


WITH A PREFATORY POEM 
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 





gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

1902 


Aii rights reserved 


T7 






U> 


TO 

Eobert 2,oui!S »)tebengon 

OF SCOTLAND AND SAMOA 


I DEDICATE THESE STORIES OF THAT 
GREY GALLOWAY LAND 
WHERE 

ABOUT THE GRAVES OF THE MARTYRS 
THE WHAUPS ARE CRYING — HIS HEART REMEMBERS HOW 




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Blows the wind to-day ^ and the sun and the rain are Jlying — 
Blows the wmd on the moors to-day and noiv, 

Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying^ 
My heart remembers how I 

CraVi recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places^ 

Standing Stones on the vaca7it^ wine-red moor^ 

Hills of sheep ^ and the howes of the sile^it vanished raceSy 
And winds y austere and pure ! 

Be it granted me to behold you again in dyings 
Hills of ho77ie ! and to hear again the call — 

Hear about the graves of the martyrs the pee-wees crying^ 

Aftd hear 7to more at alL 


Robert Louis Stevenson. 





9 


<• 


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• • 




4 


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I 




THE GREY GALLOWAY T.AND 





A LETTER DECLARATORY TO THE 
SECOND EDITION 


Dear Louis Stevenson — It is, I think, a remark of 
your own that the imprudences of men, even oftener 
than their ill deeds, come home to roost. At least, if 
you have not so remarked it, you have not lived so long 
without observing it. Now, in some wise, you have 
at least a god -papa’s responsibility for the Stickit 
Minister^ and if you have no spoon of silver for the 
poor fellow, you will be expected at the least duly to 
hear his catechism. 

A month ago when, entirely without permission, I 
dedicated the first edition of my prose first-born to you, 
shame kept me from further connecting you with what 
no one but yourself might ever read. As for you, I 
had you in a cleft stick, as you shall presently hear. 
But now a second edition and a preface imperatively 
required have together thawed my blateness. But it 
occurs to me that you may deny any parental responsi- 
bility, even vicarious. Well, as much is mostly done 
on these occasions. In that case we will proceed to 
lead the proof. You have, no doubt, forgotten a power 
of good law in your time, and might have forgotten 


Xll 


DECLARATORY LETTER 


even more had you ever known it. But not the wit of 
the Great Lord President himself in his best days could 
have shaken this case of mine. 

Let me then suggest to you Saranac Lake, a bleak 
sheet of ice ‘somewhere in America’ — east winds, 
hotels with a smell of cooking in the corridors, melting 
snows, and mountains. It is near flitting and settling 
day with you there, and as your custom is, you are 
owing a many letters — to me among others, epistles one, 
two, and three. For days you have passed your desk 
with a kind of pride and wicked pleasure in stubbornly 
defying your conscience. 

But one morning in the gloaming, Conscience has 
you down before you were fairly awake, and right grimly 
takes certain long arrears out of you. Then, according 
to your own account, your cries of penitence might have 
been heard a mile. In this abased condition, the Black 
Dog riding hard on your back, you made yourself 
responsible for words to the ensuing effect : ‘ Write,’ you 
said, ‘ my Timothy, no longer verse, but use Good 
Galloway Scots for your stomach’s sake — and mine. 
There be overly many at the old tooth comb ! ’ 

Well, ’tis scarce fair to hold you to it, I know ; but, 
your Will thus fleeing in a mere sauve qui pent — Con- 
science hot-foot after you, hectoring with victory — ‘ If 
you do, ril read it every word I ’ says you. And so I 
had you. 

Often when in my turn the Black Dog hath been 
upon me, and I seemed to see plainly that no Adam’s 
son would ever read a single line, least of all a reviewer 


DECLARATORY LETTER 


Xiil 


— have I rubbed hands and laughed to think of you in 
that spotless linen suit, sitting, as you imagined, safe 
and cool under whatever may be the Samoan substitute 
for a rose. 

But I hold to my pound of flesh. Will you, nill 
you, you must read — and every word. 

Nevertheless, if you find anything here, even a 
thousand sea miles from good, it is so because ever 
since Saranac, 1 have been, like Macready in Edinburgh 
when the Great Unknown came in, ‘ playing to Sir 
Walter.’ 


S. R. CROCKETT. 


Penicuik, Midlothian, 2 Tth April 1893. 




NOTE 


The stories may appear to be somewhat unequally 
illustrated. Some are equipped with a number of 
drawings, while others lack even one. The illustrators, 
in fact, were left entirely to the freedom of their own 
wills and the incidence of their several likings. Their 
work has been almost wholly a labour of love, and I 
have to thank every one of them for their sympathetic 
interpretation of that mysteriously beautiful Galloway 
country which is so dear to me, and the love of which 
I so greatly desire to share with others. 

S. R. C. 




THE FARM OF DUCHRAE 


CONTENTS 


The Stickit Minister 

Accepted of the Beasts 

Trials for License by the Presbytery of Pitscottie 21 

‘The Heather Lintie’ 31 

The Split in the Marrow Kirk 43 

The Probationer 54 

The Lammas Preaching 65 


The Tragedy of Duncan Duxcanson, Schoolmaster . 78 

Why David Oliphant remained a Presbyterian 90 

The Three Maister Peter Slees, Ministers in the 

Parish of Couthy 96 

The Courtship of Allan Fairley, of Earlswood . 106 

John Smith of Arkland prepares his Sermon . . 118 

h 


CONTENTS 


xviii 

PAGE 

A Day in the Life of Reverend James Pitbye, 

Minister of Nether Dullarg . . . .125 

The Glen Kells Short Leet 13 1 

Boanerges Simpson’s Encumbrance . . . .143 

A Knight-Errant of the Streets . . . -153 

The Progress of Cleg Kelly, Mission Worker . 165 

Ensamples to the Flock 199 

The Siege of M^Lurg’s Mill 214 

The Minister of Scaur casts out with his Maker 229 

John Black, Critic in Ordinary 238 

The Candid Friend 245 

A Midsummer Idyll 252 

The Tutor of Curlywee 267 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

WITH SOME NOTES 


The Stickit Minister Ploughing (by Ernest A. Water- 

low, A.R.A.) . . . . . Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The Grey Galloway Land (by William S. MacGeorge) . x 
A characteristic Galloway moor, near Lochinbreck, Balmaghie. 

The Farm of Duchrae (by H. Moxon Cook) . . xvii 

Birthplace of Author. 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) . . . i 

The Home of the Stickit Minister (by H. Moxon 

Cook) 7 

Drawn at Drumbreck, Balmaghie. A typical Galloway farm- 


steading. 

Initial Letter lo 

The Kirkyard of Kirkclaugh (by William Mouncey) . 20 

Drawn from Kirkyard of Kirkchrist on the Borgue coast. 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) . . . .21 
A Line-side Loch (by H. Moxon Cook) .... 30 

Drawn at Loch Skerrow on the Port Patrick Railway. A 
moorland watering station. 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) . . . .31 


The Manse of the Marrow Kirk (by William Mouncey) 43 


XX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) ... 54 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) ... 65 

The Flooded Meadows (by H. Moxon Cook) . . .71 

Drawn from the heights above the flooded Black Water of Dee, 
looking towards New Galloway Station. 

The Lammas Flood (by James Paterson, R.W.S.) . . 74 

‘Trusty Tait’ (‘ Boys’ Dog’), by William Foster . . 85 

The Parish of Couthy (by William Mouncey) . . 97 

Drawn in the Galloway Lowlands, on the river Dee. 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Bum Murdoch) . . .106 

‘I’ll show you to the Door ’( by D. M. M‘Kellar) . in 

‘ By the Black Armour of the Earlswood who died 

AT Flodden’ (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) . . - US 

Earlswood House (by Joseph Pennell) . . . .117 

Nether Dullarg (by William Mouncey) . . .125 

A Galloway Manse. 

In the Glen Kells (by Ernest A. Wateilow, A.R.A.) . 131 

The Valley of the Ken (by W. S. MacGeorge) . -135 

Drawn from near New Galloway, looking south to the Ben- 
nan and Cairn Edward. 

The Slippers of Augustus Towers (by W. G. Burn 

Murdoch) . . . . . . . . -137 

‘In the dark of the Doorway’ ( by D. M. M‘Kellar) . 140 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) . . -143 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) . . *153 

The Canongate (by Joseph Pennell) . . . -157 


In the Canongate 


. 161 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxi 

PAGE 

Initial Letter (byW. G. Burn Murdoch) . . .165 

An Edinburgh Street (by Joseph Pennell) . . .167 

Edinburgh Roofs (by Joseph Pennell) . . . .170 

Hunker Court (by Joseph Pennell) . . . -171 

Courts and Closes (by Joseph Pennell) . . . .172 

‘A Place of Steep Stairs and Bitter Bread’ (by 

Joseph Pennell) 175 

Metropolitan Weather (by Joseph Pennell) . .177 

Hare’s Public (by Joseph Pennell) 179 

Edinburgh Old Houses (by Joseph Pennell) . . .182 

Looking into the Depths of the Underworld (by 

Joseph Pennell) . .185 

A Queer Corner of the Old Town (by Joseph Pennell) 189 

An Edinburgh Pend (by Joseph Pennell) . . .192 

A Canongate Close (by Joseph Pennell) . . -193 

An Edinburgh Wet Night (by Joseph Pennell) . . 195 

A Doorway in the Old Town (by Joseph Pennell) . 197 

The Lochside by M‘Lurg’s Mill (by H. Moxon Cook) . 201 

Drawn at Elates Mill by the side of Woodhall Loch (properly 
Loch Grenoch), in the Parish of Balmaghie. 

MTurg’s Mill (by H. Moxon Cook) .... 209 


Drawn at Elates Mill, Parish of Ealmaghie, the original of 
M'Lurg’s Mill. 

Leeb goes Marketing to the Village (by H. Moxon 

Cook) ........ 216 

Drawn at Laurieston Village, in Ealmaghie ; a typical Gallo- 
way village — the church and old school to the left. 


XXll 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Timothy M‘Lurg is not refused his own Water- 
power (by William Foster) 226 

Initial Letter (by W. G. Burn Murdoch) . . .229 

The Grassy Gateways of Tantallon (by Joseph Pennell) 234 

j 

The Parish of Kilconquhar (by William Mouncey) . 253 

Drawn from a ‘ Knowe-tap ’ in a lowland Galloway Parish. 

Gloaming over Curlywee (by A. G. Denholm Young) . 266 
The Barrier of the Hills (by A, G. Denholm Young") . 275 

Drawn from the Dungeon of Buchan, looking towards the 
road behind which lies Loch Enoch. 


1 


THE STICKIT MINISTER 


THE RENUNCIATION OF ROBERT FRASER, FORMERLY 
STUDENT IN DIVINITY 


ws were wheeling 
N behind the plough 



in scattering 
clusters, and 
plumping singly upon 



the soft, thick grubs which 
the ploughshare was turning out 
upon an unkindly world. It was 


a bask blowy day in the end of March, and there 
was a hint of storm in the air — a hint emphasised 
for those skilled in weather lore by the presence 
of half a dozen sea-gulls, white vagrants among 
the black coats, blown by the south wind up from 
the Solway — -a snell, Scotch, but not unfriendly day 
altogether. Robert Fraser bent to the plough handles, 
and cast a keen and wary eye towards his guide posts 
on the ridge. His face was colourless, even when a 
dash of rain came swirling across from the crest of Ben 


THE STICKIT MINISTER 


Gairn, whose steep bulk heaved itself a blue haystack 
above the level horizon of the moorland. He was 
dressed like any other ploughman of the south uplands — 
rough homespun much the worse for wear, and leggings 
the colour of the red soil which he was reversing with the 
share of his plough. Yet there was that about Robert 
Fraser which marked him no common man. When he 
paused at the top of the ascent, and stood with his back 
against the horns of the plough, the countryman's 
legacy from Adam of the Mattock, he pushed back his 
weatherbeaten straw hat with a characteristic gesture, 
and showed a white forehead with blue veins channelling 
it — a damp, heavy lock of black hair clinging to it as 
in Severn's picture of John Keats on his deathbed. 
Robert Fraser saw a couple of black specks which moved 
smoothly and evenly along the top of the distant dyke 
of the highway. He stood still for a moment or two 
watching them. As they came nearer, they resolved 
themselves into a smart young man sitting in a well- 
equipped gig drawn by a showily-actioned horse, and 
driven by a man in livery. As they passed rapidly 
along the road the hand of the young man appeared in 
a careless wave of recognition over the stone dyke, and 
Robert Fraser lifted his slack reins in staid acknowledg- 
ment It was more than a year since the brothers had 
looked each other so nearly in the eyes. They were 
Dr. Henry Fraser, the rising physician of Cairn Edward, 
and his elder brother Robert, once Student of Divinity 
at Edinburgh College, whom three parishes knew as 
‘ The Stickit Minister.' 

When Robert Fraser stabled his horses that night 


THE STICKIT MINISTER 


3 


and went in to his supper, he was not surprised to find 
his friend, Saunders M‘Quhirr of Drumquhat, sitting by 
the peat fire in the ‘room/ Almost the only thing 
which distinguished the Stickit Minister from the other 
small farmers of the parish of Dullarg was the fact that 
he always sat in the evening by himself ben the hoose, 
and did not use the kitchen in common with his house- 
keeper and herd boy, save only at meal-times. Robert 
had taken to Saunders ever since — the back of his 
ambition broken — he had settled down to the farm, and 
he welcomed him with shy cordiality. 

‘You’ll take a cup of tea, Saunders?’ he asked. 

‘ Thank ye, Robert, I wadna be waur o’t,’ returned 
his friend. 

‘ I saw your brither the day,’ said Saunders M‘Quhirr, 
after the tea-cups had been cleared away, and the silent 
housekeeper had replaced the books upon the table. 
Saunders picked a couple of them up, and, having ad- 
justed his glasses, he read the titles — Milton's Works^ and 
a volume of a translation of Dorner’s Person of Christ. 

‘ I saw yer brither the day ; he maun be gettin’ a 
big practice ! ’ 

‘ Ay ! ’ said Robert Fraser, very thoughtfully. 

Saunders M‘Quhirr glanced up quickly. It was, of 
course, natural that the unsuccessful elder brother should 
envy the prosperous younger, but he had thought that 
Robert Fraser was living on a different plane. It was 
one of the few things that the friends had never spoken 
of, though every one knew why Dr. Fraser did not visit 
his brother’s little farm. ‘ He’s gettin’ in wi’ the big 
fowk noo, an’ thinks maybe that his brither wad do him 

B 


4 


THE STICKIT MINISTER 


nae credit/ That was the way the clash of the country- 
side explained the matter. 

‘ I never told you how I came to leave the college, 
Saunders,* said the younger man, resting his brow on a 
hand that even the horn of the plough could not make 
other than diaphanous. 

‘ No,* said Saunders quietly, with a tender gleam 
coming into the humorsome kindly eyes that lurked 
under their bushy tussocks of grey eyebrow. Saunders’s 
humour lay near the Fountain of Tears. 

^ No,* continued Robert Fraser, ‘ I have not spoken 
of it to so many ; but you’ve been a good frien* to me, 
Saunders, and I think you should hear it. I have not 
tried to set myself right with folks in the general, but I 
would like to let you see clearly before I go my ways to 
Him who seeth from the beginning.* 

‘ Hear till him,* said Saunders ; ‘ man, yer hoast 
is no* near as sair as it was i* the back-end. Ye’ll 
be here lang efter me ; but lang or short, weel do 
ye ken, Robert Fraser, that ye need not to pit yersel* 
richt wi* me. Hae I no* kenned ye sins ye war the size 
o* twa scrubbers ? * 

‘ I thank you, Saunders,* said Robert, ‘ but I am well 
aware that I’m to die this year. No, no, not a word. 
It is the Lord’s will ! It’s mair than seven year now 
since I first kenned that my days were to be few. It 
was the year my faither died, and left Harry and me 
by our lane. 

‘ He left no siller to speak of, just plenty to lay him 
decently in the kirkyard among his forebears. I had 
been a year at the Divinity Hall then, and was going 


THE STICKIT MINISTER 


5 


up to put in my discourses for the next session. I had 
been troubled with my breast for some time, and so 
called one day at the infirmary to get a word with Sir 
James. He was very busy when I went in, and never 
noticed me till the hoast took me. Then on a sudden 
he looked up from his papers, came quickly over to me, 
put his own white handkerchief to my mouth, and 
quietly said, “ Come into my room, laddie ! ’’ Ay, he 
was a good man and a faithful. Sir James, if ever there 
was one. He told me that with care I might live five 
or six years, but it would need great care. Then a 
strange prickly coldness came over me, and I seemed to 
walk light-headed in an atmosphere suddenly rarefied. 
I think I know now how the mouse feels under the air- 
pump.’ 

‘ What’s that ? ’ queried Saunders. 

‘ A cruel ploy not worth speaking of,’ continued the 
Stickit Minister. ‘ Well, I found something in my throat 
when I tried to thank him. But I came my ways home 
to the Dullarg, and night and day I considered what 
was to be done, with so much to do and so little time 
to do it. It was clear that both Harry and me could 
not gang through the college on the little my faither had 
left. So late one night I saw my way clear to what I 
should do. Harry must go, I must stay. I must come 
home to the farm, and be my own “ man ” ; then I could 
send Harry to the college to be a doctor, for he had no 
call to the ministry as once I thought I had. More 
than that, it was laid on me to tell Jessie Loudon that 
Robert Fraser was no better than a machine set to go 
five year. 


6 


THE STICKIT MINISTER 


‘ Now all these things I did, Saunders, but there’s 
no use telling you what they cost in the doing. They 
were right to do, and they were done. I do not repent 
any of them. I would do them all over again were 
they to do, but it’s been bitterer than I thought.’ 

The Stickit Minister took his head off his hand and 
leaned wearily back in his chair. 

‘ The story went over the country that I had failed 
in my examinations, and I never said that I had not. 

But there were some that knew better who might have 
contradicted the report if they had liked. I settled 
down to the farm, and I put Harry through the college, 
sending all but a bare living to him in Edinburgh. I 
worked the work of the farm, rain and shine, ever since, 
and have been for these six years the “ stickit minister ” 
that all the world kens the day. Whiles Harry did not 
think that he got enough. He was always writing for ^ 
more, and not so very pleased when he did not get it. 

He was aye different to me, ye ken, Saunders, and he 
canna be judged by the same standard as you and me.’ 

‘ I ken,’ said Saunders M^Quhirr, a spark of light 
lying in the quiet of his eyes. 

‘ Well,’ continued Robert Fraser, lightened by 
Saunders’s apparent agreement, ‘ the time came when he 
was clear from the college, and wanted a practice. He 
had been ill-advised that he had not got his share of 
the farm, and he wanted it selled to share and share 
alike. Now I kenned, and you ken, Saunders, that it’s 
no’ worth much in one share let alone two. So I got 
the place quietly bonded, and bought him old Dr, 
Aitkin’s practice in Cairn Edward with the money. 



THE HOME OF THE STICKIT MINISTER 





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THE STICKIT MINISTER 


9 


‘ I have tried to do my best for the lad, for it was 
laid on me to be my brother’s keeper. He doesna come 
here much,’ continued Robert, ‘ but I think he’s not so 
ill against me as he was. Saunders, he waved his hand 
to me when he was gaun by the day ! ’ 

‘ That was kind of him,’ said Saunders M‘Quhirr. 

‘ Ay, was it no’,’ said the Stickit Minister, eagerly, 
with a soft look in his eyes as he glanced up at his 
brother’s portrait in cap and gown, which hung over the 
china dogs on the mantelpiece. 

‘ I got my notice this morning that the bond is to 
be called up in November,’ said Robert. ‘ So I’ll be 
obliged to flit.’ 

Saunders M^Quhirr started to his feet in a moment. 
‘ Never,’ he said, with the spark of Are alive now in his 
eyes, ‘ never as lang as there’s a beast on Drumquhat, 
or a poun’ in Cairn Edward Bank’ — bringing down his 
clenched fist upon the Milton on the table. 

‘ No, Saunders, no,’ said the Stickit Minister, very 
gently ; ‘ I thank you kindly, but /’// be jiitied before 
that / ^ 


ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


T was a bright June day 
when the Reverend Hugh 
Hamilton was placed in 
the little kirk of the Cow- 
denknowes. He was 
twenty-two years of age, 
and he had flushed like a 
girl of sixteen when he 
preached as a candidate 
before the congregation. 
But he did not blush 
when he was ordained by 
the laying on of the hands 
of the presbytery. There 
was a look of the othei 
world on his face as he knelt in sight of all the people 
to receive on his yellow hair the hands of the assembled 
brethren. Hugh Hamilton had been devoted to temple 
service, like Samuel, from his birth ; yet there had never 
been anything of the ‘ pious boy ’ about him even as a 
lad. He could always climb a tree or run a race to the 
top of the Bow Fell with any one. He was therefore 



ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


II 


never lightly treated by his companions, but as he had 
not been known to tell a lie even when circumstances 
made it extremely convenient, nor even so much as steal 
a turnip — a plant in which there are no rights of 
property in Scotland — his companions had long ago 
decided that there must be a lack of sound morality 
somewhere about him. He was a popular sort of boy, 
but was not considered to have very good principles. 

At college he spent most of his time in helping the 
laggards of his companions over the numerous examina- 
tion fences that barred their way — mere skipping-ropes 
to him, but very five-barred gates to the Rodericks and 
Dugalds who had come down from the hills with the 
grace of God in their hearts, a bag of oatmeal coarse 
ground for brose in their wooden boxes, and twelve 
pounds in single notes inside their waistcoats to see 
them through the session. 

One of these came all the way to Hugh’s ordination. 
He was now the Rev. Roderick M‘Leod of the parish 
of Kilmuir in the Lews, and he made the speech of 
the evening. It ran or rather hirpled somewhat as 
follows : 

‘ I hef arose to speak, no’ that I am that goot at the 
speakin’, but I can not gang away back to the Hielan’s 
an’ keep silence on this occasion. For if it had no’ been 
for your minister and the kindness of Providence, it’s 
no’ here that I would hef been, nor yet at my awn 
manse in the Lews ; but it’s sittin’ I would hef been on 
a stone dyke in the Ross of Mull keepin’ the craws aff 
three rigs of pitawties. If I could speak to you in the 
Gaelic, I would tell you the feelin’s that’s in my heart 


12 


ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


for your minister, but the English is no’ a langwage that 
is good for expressin’ the feelings in. I hef no wife at 
awl, but if I had ten wifes I wouldna think ass muckle 
o’ them ass I do of your minister for his kindness to a 
puir lad from Mull.’ 

It was thought to be a very happy settlement, and 
Hugh Hamilton felt it to be a consecration. Had he 
been called to minister to a congregation of the angels 
in some rural parish of heaven, he could not have held 
higher opinions of his parishioners. He might have 
had a fair chance in the garden of Eden to the general 
advantage of the race, but he was sorely handicapped in 
the Cowdenknowes. He was aware that all men did not 
act aright on every occasion ; but Hugh considered this 
to be not so much their own fault, as a proof of the 
constant agency of that power which worketh for evil, 
of which he was almost morbidly conscious in his own 
soul. 

His first sermon was a wonder. > As the theological 
postman said, ‘ He was ayont the duds afore we could 
get oor books shut, oot o’ sicht gin we gat oorsel’s 
settled in oor seats, an’ we saw nae mair o’ him till he 
said, “ Amen.” ’ But Hugh Hamilton knew nothing of 
this. He had been in high communion with the unseen, 
and he doubted not that each one of his hearers 
had accompanied him all the way and seen the sights 
of the seventh heavens as he had seen them. 

As he walked down the street on the following day 
he swung along to an unheard melody — the music of 
the other world playing in his ear. But he did not 
know enough of this world to catch the eye of the wife 


ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


i3 

of the richest merchant in the place when she had got 
all ready to bow to him. 

‘ An’ him had his tea in my verra hoose on Wednes- 
day three weeks, nae farther gane, the prood upstart ! ’ 
said she. 

Hugh Hamilton went on to the deathbed of a child, 
all unconscious that he had made an enemy for life. 
But Mrs. Penpont went home in a white rage, and told 
her husband the story with frills and furbelows of adorn- 
ment — how the new minister had ‘ slichtit her, the 
Bailie’s wife, that had taen twa seats in his kirk juist for 
obleegement — her that was a laird’s dochter ’ 

‘ I wadna work the auld man’s, kail-yard ower sair ! ’ 
said her husband. 

‘ An’ you’re but little better, Andra Penpont, jibin’ an’ 
jeerin’ at yer ain marriet wife, you that wad hae been 
nocht ava but for what ye got wi’ me ! ’ 

‘ ’Deed, Jess, I wad let that flee stick to the wa’ gin 
I war you. A’ that I ever gat wi’ you has been paid 
for twa or three times ower ! ’ 

But Mrs. Andrew did not stand fire, for her husband 
knew how to keep a tight grip of these two vast forces 
in affairs domestic — the purse and the temper. Great 
power is given to him who knoweth how to keep these 
two. 

Hugh Hamilton was not a great success in the 
pulpit. ‘ He’s far ower the heids o’ the fowk,’ was the 
complaint laid against him where the wiseacres most 
did congregate. ‘ Withoot doot he has graun’ heid- 
knowledge, but it’s no’ to be lookit for that a laddie like 
him should hae the leevin’ experience o’ religion.’ 


14 


ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


But he had a mysterious fascination for children of 
all ages. They recognised that in somewise he was kin 
to them. The younger they were, the stronger seemed 
the attraction which drew them to the minister. He 
seemed to be a citizen of that country forth from which 
they had lately voyaged. There were a dozen of them 
ever about his knees, listening rapt while he told them 
the simple stories which pleased them best, or as he 
sang to them in a voice like a heavenly flute or a lonely 
bird singing in the first of Spring. 

‘ I like nae siccan wark,’ said some ; ‘ how is he to 
fricht them when he comes to catechise them if he 
makes so free wi’ them the noo, that’s what I wad like 
to ken?’ ‘ Na, an’ anither thing, he’s aye sing, singin’ 
at his hymns. Noo, there may be twa-three guid hymns, 
though I hae my doots — but arnong a’ that he sings, it 
Stan’s to reason that there maun be a hantle o’ balder- 
dash ! ’ 

Meantime Hugh Hamilton went about as he did 
ever with his head in the air, unconscious that he had 
an evil-wisher in the world, smiling with boyish frankness 
on all with his short-sighted blue eyes. There was not 
a lass in the parish but looked kindly upon him, for 
Hugh’s eyes had the dangerous gift of personal speech, 
so that the slightest word from him seemed under the 
radiance of his glance to be weighty with personal 
meanings. If one heart beat faster as he walked down 
the long green Kirk Loan with May Carruthers, the 
belle of the parish, that heart was not Hugh Hamilton’s. 
He was trysted to a fairer bride, and like Him whom 
he took to be his Master in all things, he longed to lay 


ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


15 


down his life for the people. But he was too humble 
to expect that his God would so honour him. 

He awakened memories of that young James 
Renwick who died in the Edinburgh Grassmarket, 
last of them who counted not their lives dear for the 
sake of the Scottish Covenant ; but he had something 
too of the over -sweetness which marks certain of 
Rutherford’s letters. His was a life foredoomed to 
bitter experience, and to the outsider his actual 
experience seemed of the grimmest and bitterest, yet 
he never thought himself worth even self-pity, that most 
enervating draught which any man can drink. Like 
the Israelitish city, he was ringed round with unseen 
celestial defences and passed unscathed through the 
most terrible experiences. 

So two years went over the young man’s head, and 
to the few who best understood him he seemed like an 
angel entertained unawares. But in the secret darks of 
the stairs, in the whispered colloquy of the parlours, an 
enemy was at work ; and murderous whispers, indefinite, 
disquieting, suggesting vague possibilities of all things 
evil, brought with them the foul reek of the pit where 
they were forged, paralysing his work and killing his 
best usefulness. But Hugh Hamilton wotted not at all 
of it. What threats came to him by the penny post or 
were slipped into his letter-box on dark nights, were 
known only to himself and his Maker. Probably he 
held them to be only what he must expect from the 
Accuser of the Brethren. At least, he made no sound, 
and none knew if he suffered. Elders dropped away, 
members lifted their lines and went to other communions. 


i6 ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 

Only his Sabbath school remained unimpaired. There 
his marvellous voice shrilled clearer and ever clearer, 
even after there remained no teacher to assist him, as 
though he had led his little flock to the very gate of 
heaven, and were now pleading with the Guardian of 
the Keys to let the children in straightway to their 
inheritance. Children of strict and orthodox parents 
were removed, but the Sabbath school remained full. 
For this strange yoilng minister, a fairy changeling 
surely, had but to go out into the highways and the 
hedges to compel others to come in. 

Then in a little there came the clamant and definite 
bitterness of the ‘ Fama Clamosa' — the moving of the 
Presbytery which had licensed and ordained him, by his 
luling elder and one other of the congregation. In the 
reverend court itself there was, at first, only bitterness 
and dissension. Hugh Hamilton met his accusers 
openly, but there was no fiery indignation in his 
defence, only a certain sad disappointment. He had 
received his first backset, and it told on him like a 
sentence of death. His faith in man died in a day ; 
therefore he clung more closely to his faith in a God 
who looketh not on the outward appearance, but on 
the heart. 

He could not conceive how it was possible that any 
should for a moment believe those things which certain 
witnessed against him. He had brought no witnesses. 
He would employ no lawyer. If the Presbytery 
thought fit in the interests of the religion of the parish, 
he would demit his charge ; if they judged it right he 
would accept deposition without a word. 


accepted of the beasts 


17 


But Hugh Hamilton was not to be deposed. 
Suspended during inquiry, he still did the few duties 
which remained to him, and visited wherever there was 
a door open for him to enter. There were not many. 
This was for him ‘ that Mount Sinai in Arabia ’ beneath 
which his Scripture told him the Christ’s Man must a 
while sojourn. 

One morning the farmer of Drumrash went out 
early among his beasts, and was surprised to find them 
grouped in a dense swaying mass about an empty 
quarry, horning and shouldering one another in their 
eagerness to approach. Mysterious sounds arose from 
the whin -bound quarry hole, disquieting even in the 
cool dawn of the morning. The farmer crept to a gap 
in the whin-bushes, and through it he was astonished to 
see the suspended minister of the Cowdenknowes with 
a face all suffused with joy, singing words he could not 
understand to a tune no man had ever heard before ; 
while about him, ever nearer and nearer, the ‘ nowt ’ 
beasts pressed, tossing their sullen fronts, silent and 
fascinated by the magic of the singing. 

Then the farmer remembered that he had heard tell 
that the minister had wandered on the hills singing and 
praying to himself ever since they shut the door of his 
Sabbath school against him. 

Gradually the words came clearer — 

‘ He was despised . . . despised . . • 

And rejected of meit^ 

A Man of Sorrows^ 

And acquainted with griefs 

So the melody swayed and thrilled, falling for a 


i8 ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 

moment into delicious heart-breaking silences, anon 
returning with thrilling power, like the voice of a martyr 
praising God out of the place of fire. Drumrash felt 
his eyes wet with unaccustomed tears. He had never 
heard of Handel, and if he had he need not have been 
less affected, for surely never was the great music sung 
in such wise or to such an audience, 

‘ He was despised . . . despised ... 

A7id rejected of men , . ? 

The lowering foreheads and tossing horns drooped 
lower, and hung over the singer like the surge of a 
breaking wave. 

^ A Man of Sorrows^ 

A7id acquainted with gTdefd 

The song rose, beating tremulously against the sky, 
till the listener felt his heart brimming to the overflow ; 
so, abruptly rising, he turned and fled, leaving Hugh 
Hamilton alone with his last congregation. 

Two hours afterwards a shepherd came that way 
by chance seeking a lost lamb, and in its place he 
found the minister of Cowdenknowes, fallen still and 
silent, his face turned to the sky, and the dew of the 
morning yet wet upon it. There was a light of eman- 
cipation on his brow, for he had seen the Vision which 
every man shall one day see, and it had not affrighted 
him. There was even a kind of triumph under the 
film which had begun to gather over the eyes of translu- 
cent blue. 

They buried him at his own expense in the deserted 


ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


19 


kirkyard at Kirkclaugh, a mile or two along the windy 
brow of the sea cliff, looking to the sale of his books to 
defray the cost. There were just six people at the 
funeral, and one of them was the farmer of Drumrash. 
But the whole countryside stood afar off to see what the 
end would be. Only the ‘ nowt ^ beasts came gazing 
and wondering into the unfenced and deserted burying- 
ground as though they at least would have mourned 
for him who had drawn them about him when other 
congregation he had none. 

Hardly a week after the minister was. laid to rest, 
the dead body of the Strange Woman, whose accusation 
had wrought the ill — one of small repute but infinite 
power of mischief — was found, wave-driven, at the foot 
of the Kirkclaugh Heuchs. On the cliff edge above 
there lay a hat and veil, the latter neatly folded, and on 
it a note pinned — 

‘ I can live no longer. I betrayed innocent blood. 
As Judas betrayed his Master, so I sold him — yet got 
neither money nor kiss. Now I also go to my own 
place.’ 

The minister’s books fetched enough to put up a 
little tombstone of red sandstone simply graven with 
his name and age. But the farmer of Drumrash 
thought it looked bare and unkindly, so taking counsel 
of no man, he laid his wait one day for Bourtree, 
the drunken stone-cutter. Him he stood over with 
the horsewhip of coercion till he had done his will. 
So now, in staggering capitals, you may read the 
words — 

C 


20 


ACCEPTED OF THE BEASTS 


HUGH HAMILTON, 

Aged 24 Years. 

^ He was despised . . . and rejected of 7neni 

And still Hugh Hamilton’s last congregation toss their 
sullen frontals, and nose with the moist and stupid 
affection of ‘bestial’ the crumbling stone which, on that 
wind-vexed and unkindly promontory, tells the infre- 
quent wayfarer of yet another ‘Rejected of Men.’ 



THE KIRKYARD OF KIRKCLAUGH 


TRIALS FOR LICENSE BY THE PRESBYTERY 
OF PITSCOTTIE 



HEN I cam’ hame 
from my first pres- 
bytery at Pitscottie, 
the wife was awfu’ 
keen to ken a’ that 


had passed, for she said, ‘ If it’s 
sae graun’ to listen to yae 
minister on Sabbath, what maun 
it no be to hear a dizzen a’ at 
yince ? ’ But there was juist 
where my wife was mistaen that 


time whatever, for as a matter o’ experience, it’s a moral 
impossibeelity to hear ony yin o’ twal ministers when 
they are a’ speakin’ at yae time. 

But I said to Mrs. MaWhurr, ‘ Do you no’ think that 
ye had better wait till the forenicht, an’ then ye can hear 
a’ aboot it, no in snips an’ clippets ? Rob Adair will 
likely be ower frae the toon, for he was gaun to come 
this way to gie a look at some score or twa o’ Kirk- 
connel’s yowes.* 

So in the efternoon she pat on a bit fire in the parlour 


22 


TRIALS FOR LICENSE 


ben the hoose, which she disna do unless weVe gaun to 
hae company, and by the time that Rob Adair cam’ she 
was in graun’ fettle to listen. For ye see this was the 
first time that I had ever been presbytery elder, an’ oor 
minister was fell anxious for me to gang doon to Pit- 
scottie, for there was a lad that he kenned cornin’ a’ the 
road frae Enbra’ for leecense to preach the gospel, an’ 
the minister thocht that some o’ the auld yins o’ the 
presbytery micht be ower sair on the young man. 

Rob Adair cam’ in wat an’ dry, an’ to help baith, 
got a change o’ claes an’ his tea oot o’ oor best 
cheena. Then when the pipes were gaun weel, they 
baith lookit ower at me. Brawly kenned I that they 
were hotchin’ for me to gie them the presbytery ; but I 
gaed on askin’ Rob aboot the price o’ beasts, an’ hoo 
mony lambs had been selled on the hill that day, till my 
wife could stand it no longer. 

‘ Saunders MaWhurr,’ says she, ‘ if there’s a waur 
tried woman than me or a mair aggravatin’ man than 
you in sax pairishes, I dinna ken them.’ 

So I began. 

‘ Weel, as ye ken, I was no’ that carin’ aboot gaun 
to the presbytery at the first go-off, but oor minister 
wadna be said “ No ” to.’ 

‘ An’ you’re no’ the man to say it gin he war,’ said 
the mistress. 

‘ She means that me an’ the minister ’grees fine,’ said 
I to Rob, ‘ though he wasna my man when he cam’, on 
accoont o’ his giein’ oot a Paraphrase. This was my 
opeenion at that time ; he haes a harmonium noo i’ the 
kirk, an’ Alexander M‘Quhirr, Drumquhat, was the first 


TRIALS FOR LICLRSE 


23 


name on the list o’ subscribers. Change ? — I wadna gie 
a whustle for a man that canna change when he fin’s 
he’s wrang ; so it’s no wonder oor minister an’ me’s 
verra pack. He has taen me a lang gate sins him an’ 
me fell acquant. I used to think Jeems Carlyle the only 
yin o’ the Carlyles that had come to ony guid [an’ deed 
there were few better sheep in Dumfries market on 
Wednesdays than Jeems Carlyle’s] ; but oor minister, 
wi’ the help o’ the Almichty an’ some buiks o’ Tammas 
Carlyle, thrawn stick as he was, hae garred anither 
thrawn stick o’ a farmer body lift his een abune the 
nowt an’ the shairn.’ 

‘ Skip the minister, an’ the haivers the twa o’ ye talk 
aboot auld Tam — drive on wi’ yer presbytery!’ said 
my wife. In the generality, ye ken. I’m ower slow for 
the wife ; she kind o* likes a’ things to gang forrit gye 
an’ sherp, an’ wad gar a’ the hens hae their layin’ 
dune i’ the mornin’ an’ their nests made afore they gaed 
oot to pick a single corn. 

Yince I offended her sair when the factor was here 
to his tea. ‘ Hae a bit o’ this skim milk cheese Factor,’ 
says I, ‘ it’s my wife’s ain makkin’, an’ I’se warrant there’s 
neyther dirt nor butter in’t 1 ’ 

‘Weel, the presbytery be’t,’ says I, for I saw that 
my wife’s patience, never verra lang at the best, was 
cornin’ near an end. I ken the length o’t to a hair, as 
by this time I hae a good richt to do. ‘ Weel, the 
coort met an’ was constitutit.’ 

‘ What’s that ? ’ asked Rob Adair. 

‘ Pegs, I do not ken, ye’ll hae to ask the clerk, it was 
him that said it,’ says I, ‘ an’ then there was reports. 


24 


TRIALS FOR LICENSE 


an’ strings o’ feegures like laddies’ coonts ; but 
naebody payed muckle attention, but talkit to their 
neebours till the clerk caaed ‘ Order ! ’ Then they were 
quaite for half a meenit, an’ syne at it again. Deed 
the clerk talkit too when he didna mind.’ 

‘ Dear sirce, an’ that’s a presbytery. I thocht it was 
like a week o’ sacraments ! ’ said my wife. 

‘ Verra far frae that,’ says I, ‘for o’ a’ the craiturs to 
fecht, doos an’ ministers are the maist quarrelsome.’ 

‘ Did oor minister fecht ? ’ asked the mistress, verra 
pointed. 

‘ Na, he was raither a peacemaker, so to speak,’ says 
I, cautious like ; ‘ of coorse a man haes whiles to speak 
his mind.’ 

‘ Ow ! he’s the wee white hen that never lays away — 
oor minister, I ken,’ says she, dried like. 

‘Ye never war the bird to fyle yer ain kirk riggin,’ 
said Rob. (Whiles I’m feared that auld Rob is gettin’ a 
wee doited.) 

‘ Y er keepin’ me frae the presbytery wi’ yer haivers,’ 
says I, an’ that made them as quaite as pussy. ‘ Weel, 
in a wee it came on to the leecensin’, an’ the laddie frae 
Enbra’ was bidden to step in alang wi’ twa ither lads 
frae the neebourhood that had compleetit their studies 
at the college. The Enbra’ laddie had been an’ unco 
graun’ scholar — had gotten the Knox Fellowship, I think 
they caaed it, an’ was noo gaun oot to be a missionar’ 
to the haythen. So afore they could let him gang they 
bood examine him on the Hebrew an’ Latin, an’ ither 
langwiges that naebody speaks noo. I wasna lang in 
seein’ that the lad kenned mair than maybes a’ the 


TRIALS FOR LICENSE 


25 


presbytery pitten thegither. [‘ Surely no* than yer ain 
minister ! ’ pat in my wife.] An’ for the life o’ me I 
couldna see what they could fin’ faut wi’. The ither 
twa were nice lads aneuch, an’ they hummered an’ ha’ed 
through some gate, but the Enbra’ lad never made a 
stammer, an’ had his answers oot afore they could read 
their quastions off the paper/ 

‘ But I thocht that they war a’ sair again the paper,’ 
said my wife. 

‘ Weel, sae they maistly are, but some o’ them are 
maybes a wee mair comfortable wi’ a bit note when it 
comes to the Greek an’ the Laitin. 

‘ At ony rate, it wasna till they cam’ to the discoorses 
that there was ony o’ the kin’ o’ din that oor minister 
was sae feared o’. The laddie was askit to read yin o* 
his discoorses — I kenna what it was aboot, something 
onywye that he had written in the Laitin, but was 
askit to read in the English as bein’ mair convenienter 
for the presbytery. 

‘ He wasna half wey through when up gets Maister 
Begbie frae Soorkirk, michty door-lookin,’ an’ he says. 
I’ll no’ sit in this presbytery an’ listen to ony siccan 
doctrine, frae a Knox Fella or ony ither fella ! ” says 
he. 

‘ An’ wi’ that Maister Pitbye o’ the Dullarg gat 
himsel’ on his legs ; “ I canna help thinkin’,” says he, 
“ that we wadna hae been asked to license the young 
man noo afore us if he had been considered soun’ in the 
faith in his ain presbytery. There maun be something 
sore wrang,” he says. 

‘ A’ this time the young man had been standin’ wi’ 


26 


TRIALS FOR LICENSE 


a face like daith, his lips working tryin* to get a word 
in, an’ oor minister handin’ him by the coat-tails, an’ 
tollin’ him for ony sake to sit doon, that there war plenty 
there to speak for him. But he got awa’ frae the 
minister an’ juist on Maister Pitbye’s heels he spoke 
oot, “ May I say that this discoorse has passed through 
Professor Robertson’s hauns and has received his 
approval ? ” 

‘ Oor minister sat back wi’ a look in his face as 
muckle as to say ‘‘Ye hae done for’t noo, young man 1 ” 
Then there was a din to speak about. There was 
Maister Bangour frae Muldow, an’ he was a wild man 
this day. “ Professor Robison, indeed ! I’ll learn you, 
young man, that Professor Robison has nae standin’ i’ 
the presbytery o’ Pitscottie, an’ faith, if he had we wad 
libel him this verra day, for he’s a rank heyretic, leadin’ 
the young men o’ oor kirk astray efter strange gods 1 
Ay an’ I wull testifee ” 

‘ “ Sit doon,” says Forbes, the new-placed minister o’ 
the Pits, him that the collier lads like so weel, “ testifee 
in your ain pairish if you want to testifee ! Talk sense 
here ! ” says he. Forbes is a determined North-country- 
man as dour an’ radical as fire, that got scunnered at 
hame wi’ the mair auld-fashioned o’ his brethren o’ the 
kirk. He’s no a great respecter o’ persons neyther. 
He looks as if he had focht mony battles in his day, 
and by his set teeth I could see he was bidin’ his time 
for anither. 

‘ Richt gled was I that he didna mean to set them 
in me. 

‘ By this time the fiery young minister frae the Shaws 


TRIALS FOR LICENSE 


27 


was on his feet, and wi’ the strongest words an’ a power 
o’ gesture he was layin’ intil them on the ither side. 
An’ they were speakin’ aye back till ye couldna tell 
what was what. But I watched Forbes bidin’ his time 
wi’ a face like a grew when he sees the hare but 
canna get slippit. 

‘ There was the verra sma’est calm, an’ then like a 
shot there was Maister Forbes at the table. Some o’ 
them cried, “ Hear Mr. Girmory,” but Forbes said — 

‘ “ No, Maister Begbie, ye’ll be bearin’ me the noo. 
Ye are makkin’ bonny fules o’ yersels.” ’ 

‘ My conscience ! ’ said my wife, who was listening 
with her whole being, ‘ was he no’ blate to say that to 
ministers ? 

‘ Hoots, woman, that’s nocht to what he said efter : 

‘“Ye are pittin’ a premium on mediocrity,’ he says. 
“ Thae ither twa chaps ye let through without a word, 
though they stammered like a boy new into the ten- 
penny. But ye settled on this lad because he was 
clever, an’ wrote what he thocht himsel’, an’ didna juist 
tak’ twa-three pages frae a sermon o’ Spurgeon’s, or 
water doon the Shorter’s Quastions,” says he. “ As for 
you,” he says, turnin’ sharp to Maister Pitbye, “ ye are 
speakin’ on a quastion ye ken nocht aboot ava. An’ 
ye are weel aware ye ken nocht aboot it. Gae hame, 
man,” he says, “ an’ read yer Calvin, or buy a 
Turretin an’ read him, an’ then come back an’ gie us 
an opeenion worth listenin’ to on a theological subject.” 

‘ “ Order, order ! ” said the clerk, but the moderator 
said naething, for he didna want Forbes doun on 
him. 


28 


TRIALS FOR LICENSE 


‘ ril no* be spoken to in that mainner. I’ve never 
listened to sic words in my life,” said Maister Pitbye. 

‘ “ The mair’s the peety,” says Maister P'orbes, “ it’s 
time ye did — but better late than never ! ” 

‘ “ I move we proceed to license,” says oor minister, 
verra quaite ; so efter a show o’ hands, an’ a bit 
grummle, they juist did that ; but there was some warm 
wark efter the young men had gaen oot, an’ yince it 
lookit as if the neeves micht sune be goin’ ; but it 
cleared up verra sudden, and when a’ was dune, and 
they cam’ oot, they war a’ as thick as thieves — an 
Maister Bourtree, nae less, gaed roon shakin’ hands wi’ 
everybody, an’ sayin’, “ Whatna graun’ day we’ve had 
the day ; there’s been some life in Pitscottie presbytery 
this day, something worth cornin’ doun frae Muldow 
for ! ” 

‘ But I’m no’ so sure that it was as great fun for the 
puir lad frae Enbra’. He said to mysel’ he was glad 
he was gaun awa’ to the Cannibal Islands, an’ no 
settling in oor pairt o’ the country.’ 






4 




< 


LINE-SIDE LOCH 





‘THE HEATHER LINTIE' 



BEING A REVIEW OF THE POEMS 
OF JANET BALCHRYSTIE, 

OF BARBRAX 

ANET BALCHRYSTIE lived 
in a little cottage at the back 
of the Long Wood of Bar- 
brax. She had been a hard- 
working woman all her days, 
|for her mother died when she 
was but young, and she had 
lived on, keeping her father’s 
house by the side of the single- 
track railway line. Gavin 
Balchrystie was a foreman platelayer on the P.P.R., and, 
with two men under him, had charge of a section of 
three miles. He lived just where that distinguished but 
impecunious line plunges into a moss-covered granite 
wilderness of moor and bog — where there is not more 


than a shepherd’s hut to the half-dozen miles, and where 
the passage of a train is the occasion of commotion 
among scattered groups of black-faced sheep. Gavin 


32 


' THE HEATHER LINTIE » 


Balchrystie’s three miles of P.P.R. metals gave him little 
work, but a good deal of healthy exercise. The black- 
faced sheep breaking down the fences and straying on* 
the line side, and the torrents coming down the granite 
gullies, foaming white after a waterspout, and tearing 
into his embankments, undermining his chairs and plates, 
were the only troubles of his life. There was, however, 
a little public-house at ‘ The Huts,’ which in the old days 
of construction had had the license, and which had 
lingered alone, license and all, when its immediate pur- 
pose in life had been fulfilled, because there was nobody 
but the whaups and the railway officials on the passing 
trains to object to its continuance. Now it is cold and 
blowy on the westland moors, and neither whaups nor 
dark green uniforms object to a little refreshment up there. 
The mischief was that Gavin Balchrystie did not, like 
the guards and engine-drivers, go on with the passing 
train. He was always on the spot, and the path 
through Barbrax Wood to the Railway Inn was as well 
trodden as that which led over the big moss, where the 
whaups built, to the great white viaduct of Loch Merrick, 
where his three miles of parallel gleaming responsibility 
began. 

When his wife was but newly dead, and his Janet 
just a smart elf-locked lassie running to and from the 
school, Gavin got too much in the way of ‘ slippin’ doon 
by.’ When Janet grew to be woman-muckle, Gavin 
kept the habit, and Janet hardly knew that it was not 
the use-and-wont of all fathers to sidle down to a con- 
tiguous Railway Arms, and return some hours later with 
uncertain step, and face picked out with bright pin-points 


* THE HEATHER LINTIE ’ 


33 


of red — the sure mark of the confirmed drinker of 
whisky neat. 

* They were long days in the cottage at the back of 
Barbrax Long Wood. The little ‘but and ben’ was 
whitewashed till it dazzled the eyes as you came over 
the brae to it and found it set against the solemn depths 
of dark-green hrwood. From early morn when she saw 
her father off, till the dusk of the day when he would 
return for his supper, Janet Balchrystie saw no human 
being. She heard the muffled roar of the trains through 
the deep cutting at the back of the wood, but she her- 
self was entirely out of sight of the carriagefuls of travel- 
lers whisking past within half a mile of her solitude and 
meditation. 

Janet was what is called a ‘ through-gaun lass,* and 
her work for the day was often over by eight o’clock in 
the morning. Janet grew to womanhood without a 
sweetheart. She was plain, and she looked plainer than 
she was in the dresses which she made for herself by the 
light of nature and what she could remember of the 
current fashions at Merrick Kirk, to which she went 
every alternate Sunday. Her father and she took day 
about. Wet or shine, she tramped to Merrick Kirk, 
even when the rain blattered and the wind raved and 
bleated alternately among the pines of the Long Wood 
of Barbrax. Her father had a simpler way of spending 
his day out. He went down to the Railway Inn and 
drank ‘ ginger-beer ’ all day with the landlord. Ginger- 
beer is an unsteadying beverage when taken the day by 
the length. Also the man who drinks it steadily and 
quietly never enters on any inheritance of length of days. 


34 


‘THE HEATHER UNTIE’ 


So it came to pass that one night Gavin Balchrystie 
did not come home at all, at least not till he was brought 
lying comfortably on the door of a disused third-class 
carriage, which was now seeing out its career, anchored 
under the bank at Loch Merrick, where Gavin had used 
it as a shelter. The driver of the ‘ six-fifty up * train 
had seen him walking soberly along towards the Huts 
[and the Railway Inn], letting his long surfaceman's 
hammer fall against the rail keys occasionally as he 
walked. He saw him bend once, as though his keen 
ear detected a false ring in a loose length between two 
plates. This was the last that was seen of him till the 
driver of the ‘nine-thirty-seven down' express — the 
‘ boat-train,' as the employes of the P.P.R. call it, with a 
touch of respect in their voices — passed Gavin fallen 
forward on his face, just when he was flying down grade 
under a full head of steam. It was duskily clear, with 
a great lake of crimson light dying into purple over the 
hills of midsummer heather. The driver was John Platt, 
the Englishman from Crewe, who had been brought from 
the great London and North-Western Railway, locally 
know as ‘ The Ellnen-doubleyou.’ In these remote rail- 
way circles the talk is as exclusively of matters of the 
four-foot way as in Crewe or Derby. There is an in- 
spector of traffic whose portly presence now graces Car- 
lisle station, who left the P.P.R. in these sad days of 
amalgamation, because he could not endure to see so 
many ‘ Sou’-West ' waggons passing over the sacred 
metals of the P.P.R. permanent way. From his youth 
he had been trained in a creed of two articles — ‘ To 
swear by the P.P.R. through thick and thin, and hate 


‘THE HEATHER LINTIE ' 


35 


the apple-green of the “ Sou’- West.” ’ It was as much 
as he could do to put up with the sight of the abomina- 
tions. To have to hunt for their trucks when they got 
astray, was more than mortal could stand — so he fled the 
land. 

When they stopped the express for Gavin Bal- 
chrystie every man on the line felt that it was an honour 
to the dead. John Platt sent a ‘ gurrring’ thrill through 
the train as he put his brakes hard down, and whistled 
for the guard. He, thinking that the Merrick Viaduct 
was down at least, twirled his brake to such purpose 
that the rear car progressed along the metals by a series 
of convulsive bounds. Then they ran softly back, and 
there lay Gavin fallen forward on his knees, as though 
he had been trying to rise, or had knelt down to pray. 
Let him have ‘ the benefit of the doubt ’ in this world. 
In the next, if all tales be true, there is no such thing. 

So Janet Balchrystie dwelt alone in the white ‘ but- 
an’-ben ’ at the back of the Long Wood of Barbrax. 
The factor gave her notice ; but the laird, who was not 
accounted by his neighbours to be very wise, because he 
did needlessly kind things, told the factor to let the lassie 
bide, and delivered to herself, with his own hand, writing 
to the effect that - Janet Balchrystie, in consideration of 
her lonely condition, was to be allowed the house for 
her lifetime, a cow’s grass, and thirty pound sterling in 
the year as a charge on the estate. He drove down the 
cow himself, and having stalled it in the byre, he in- 
formed her of the fact over the yard dyke by word of 
mouth, for he never could be induced to enter her door. 
He was accounted to be ^ gey an’ queer ’ save by those 

n 


36 


‘THE HEATHER UNTIE* 


who had tried making a bargain with him. But his 
farmers liked him, knowing him to be an easy man with 
those who had been really unfortunate, for he knew to 
what the year’s crops of each had amounted, to a single 
chalder and head of nowt. 

Deep in her heart Janet Balchrystie cherished a great 
ambition. When the earliest blackbird awoke and 
began to sing, while it was yet grey twilight, Janet 
would be up and at her work. She had an ambition to 
be a great poet. No less than this would serve her. 
But not even her father had known, and no other had 
any chance of knowing. In the black leather chest 
which had been her mother’s, upstairs, there was a slowly 
growing pile of manuscript, and the editor of the local 
paper received every other week a poem, longer or 
shorter, for his Poet’s Corner, in an envelope with the 
New Dairy post-mark. He was an obliging editor, and 
generally gave the closely written manuscript to the 
senior office-boy, who had passed the sixth standard, to 
cut down, tinker the rhymes, and lop any superfluity of 
feet. The senior office-boy ‘just spread himself,’ as he 
said, and delighted to do the job in style. But there 
was a woman fading into a grey old-maidishness which 
had hardly ever been girlhood, who did not at all 
approve of these corrections. She endured them because 
over the signature of ‘ Heather Bell ’ it was a joy to see 
in the rich, close luxury of type her own poetry, even 
though it might be a trifle tattered and tossed about by 
hands ruthless and alien — those, in fact, of the senior 
office-boy. 

Janet walked every other week to the post-office at 


' THE HEATHER LINTIE ’ 


37 


New Dairy to post her letters to the editor, but neither 
that great man nor yet the senior office-boy had any 
conception that the verses of their ‘ esteemed corre- 
spondent ’ were written by a woman too early old who 
dwelt alone at the back of Barbrax Long Wood. 

One day Janet took a sudden but long -meditated 
journey. She went down by rail from the little station 
of the ‘ Huts ’ to the large town of Drum, thirty miles to 
the east. Here, with the most perfect courage and 
dignity of bearing, she interviewed a printer and arranged 
for the publication of her poems in their own original 
form, no longer staled and clapperclawed by the pencil 
of the senior office-boy. When the proof-sheets came 
to Janet, she had no way of indicating the corrections 
than by again writing the whole poem out in a neat print 
hand on the edge of the proof, and underscoring the 
words which were to be altered. This, when you think 
of it, is a very good way, when the happiest part of 
your life is to be spent in such concrete pleasures of 
hope, as were Janet’s over the crackly sheets of the 
printer of Drum. Finally the book was produced, a 
small, rather thickish octavo, on sufficiently wretched 
grey paper which had suffered from want of thorough 
washing in the original paper-mill. It was bound in a 
peculiarly deadly blue, of a rectified Reckitt tint, which 
gave you dazzles in the eye at any distance under ten 
paces. Janet had selected this as the most appropriate 
of colours. She had also many years ago decided upon 
the title, so that Reckitt had printed upon it, back and 
side, ‘The Heather Lintie,’ while inside there was the plain 
acknowledgment of authorship, which Janet felt to be a 


38 


‘ THE HEATHER LINTIE ’ 


solemn duty to the world, ‘ Poems by Janet Balchrystie, 
Barbrax Cottage, by New Dairy/ First she had thought 
of withholding her name and style ; but on the whole, 
after the most prolonged consideration she felt that she 
was not justified in bringing about such a controversy 
as had once divided Scotland concerning that ‘ Great 
Unknown’ who wrote the Waverley Novels. 

Almost every second or third day Janet trod that 
long loch-side road to New Dairy for her proof-sheets, 
and returned them on the morrow corrected in her own 
way. Sometimes she got a lift from some farmer or 
carter, for’ she had worn herself with anxiety to the 
shadow of what she had once been, and her dry bleached 
hair became grey and greyer with the fervour of her 
devotion to letters. 

By April the book was published, and at the end of 
this month, laid aside by sickness of the vague kind 
called locally ‘ a decline,’ she took to her bed — rising only 
to lay a few sticks upon the fire from her store gathered 
in the autumn, or to brew herself a cup of tea — she 
waited for the tokens of her book’s conquests in the great 
world of thought and men. She had waited so long for 
her recognition, and now it was coming. She felt that 
it would not be long before she was recognised as one 
of the singers of the world. Indeed, had she but known 
it, her recognition was already on its way. 

In a great city of the north a clever young reporter 
was cutting open the leaves of The Heather Lintie 
with a hand almost feverishly eager. 

‘ This is a perfect treasure. This is a find indeed. 
Here is my chance ready to my hand.’ 


‘ THE HEATHER LINTIE ’ 


39 


His paper was making a specialty of ‘exposures/ 
If there was anything weak and erring, anything 
particularly helpless and foolish which could make no 
stand for itself, The Night Hawk was on the pounce. 
Hitherto the Junior Reporter had never had a ‘two 
column chance.’ He had read — it was not much that 
he had read — Macaulay’s too famous article on ‘ Satan ’ 
Montgomery, and not knowing that Macaulay lived to 
regret the spirit of that assault, he felt that if he could 
bring down The Night Hawk on The Heather Lintie, 
his fortune was made. So he sat down and he wrote, 
not knowing and not regarding a lonely woman’s heart, 
to whom his word would be as the word of a God, in 
the lonely cottage lying in the lee of the Long Wood 
of Barbrax. 

The Junior Reporter turned out a triumph of the 
New Journalism. ‘ This is a book which may be a 
genuine source of pride to every native of the ancient 
province of Galloway,’ he wrote. ‘ Galloway has been 
celebrated for black cattle and for wool — as also for a 
certain bucolic belatedness of temperament, but Galloway 
has never hitherto produced a poetess. One has arisen 
in the person of Miss Janet Bal — something or other. 
We have not an interpreter at hand, and so cannot 
wrestle with the intricacies of the authoress’s name, 
which appears to be some Galwegian form of Erse or 
Choctaw. Miss Bal — and so forth — has a true fount of 
pathos and humour. In what touching language she 
chronicles the death of two young lambs which fell into 
one of the puddles they call rivers down there, and were 
either drowned or choked with the dirt — 


40 


‘ THE HEATHER UNTIE ’ 


* “ They were two bonny, bonny lambs, 

That played upon the daisied lea. 

And loudly mourned their woolly dams 
Above the drumly flowing Dee.” ’ 

‘ How touchingly simple,’ continued the Junior Reporter, 
buckling up his sleeves to enjoy himself, and feeling 
himself born to be a Saturday Reviezver, ‘ mark the 
local colour, the wool and the dirty water of the Dee — 
without doubt a name applied to one of their bigger 
ditches down there. Mark also the over-fervency of 
the touching line, 

“ And loudly mourned their woolly dams,” 

which, but for the sex of the writer and her evident 
genius, might be taken for an expression of a strength 
hardly permissible even in the metropolis.’ 

The Junior Reporter filled his two columns and en- 
joyed himself in the doing of it. He concluded with 
the words, ‘ The authoress will make a great success. 
If she will come to the capital, where genius is always 
appreciated, she will, without doubt, make her fortune. 
Nay, if Miss Bal — , but again we cannot proceed for 
the want of an interpreter — if Miss B., we say, will only 
accept a position at Cleary’s Waxworks and give read- 
ings from her poetry, or exhibit herself in the act of 
pronouncing her own name, she will be a greater draw 
in this city than Punch and Judy, or even the latest 
American advertising evangelist who preaches standing 
on his head.’ 

The Junior Reporter ceased here from very admira- 
tion at his own cleverness in so exactly hitting the tone 


‘ THE HEATHER LINTIE 


41 


of the masters of his craft, and handed his manuscript 
in to the editor. 

It was the gloaming of a long June day when Rob 
Affleck, the woodman over at Barbrax, having been at 
New Dairy with a cart of wood, left his horse on the 
roadside and ran over through Gavin’s old short cut, 
now seldom used, to Janet’s cottage with a paper in a 
yellow wrapper. 

^ Leave it on the step, and thank you kindly, Rob,’ 
said a weak voice within, and Rob, anxious about his 
horse and his bed, did so without another word. In a 
moment or two Janet crawled to the door, listened to 
make sure that Rob was really gone, opened the door, 
and protruded a hand wasted to the hard flat bone — an 
arm that ought for her years to have been of full flesh 
and noble curves. 

When Janet got back to bed it was too dark to see 
anything except the big printing at the top of the paper. 

‘Two columns of it ! ’ said Janet, with great thank- 
fulness in her heart, lifting up her soul to God who had 
given her the power to sing. She strained her pre- 
maturely old and weary eyes to make out the sense. 
‘ A genuine source of pride to every native of the ancient 
province,’ she read. 

‘The Lord be praised!’ said Janet, in a rapture of 
devout thankfulness, ‘ though I never really doubted it,’ 
she added, as though asking pardon for a moment’s 
distrust. ‘But I tried to write these poems to the 
glory of God and not to my own praise, and He will 
accept them and keep me humble under the praise of 
men as well as under their neglect.’ 


42 


‘ THE HEATHER UNTIE ’ 


So clutching the precious paper close to her breast, and 
letting tears of thankfulness fall on the article — which, 
had they fallen on the head of the Junior Reporter, 
would have burnt like fire, she patiently awaited the 
coming dawn. 

‘ I can wait till the morning now to read the rest,* 
she said. 

So hour after hour, with her eyes wide, staring hard 
at the grey window squares, she waited the light from 
the east. About half-past two there was a stirring and 
a moaning among the pines, and the roar of the sudden 
gust came with the breaking day through the dark 
arches. In the whirlwind there came a strange expect- 
ancy and tremor into the heart of the poetess, and she 
pressed the wet sheet of crumpled paper closer to her 
bosom, and turned to face the light. Through the 
spaces of the Long Wood of Barbrax there came a 
shining visitor, the Angel of the Presence, he who comes 
but once and stands a moment with a beckoning finger. 
Him she followed up through the wood. 

They found Janet on the morning of the second day 
after, with a look so glad on her face and so natural an 
expectation in the unclosed eye, that Rob Affleck spoke 
to her and expected an answer. The Night Hawk was 
clasped to her breast with a hand that they could not 
loosen. It went to the grave with her body. The ink 
had run a little here and there, where the tears had 
fallen thickest. 

God is more merciful than man. 



THE MANSE OF THE MARROW KIRK 

THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 

JiMiNY and Jaikie were two little boys. They played 
together at the bottom of a large and beautiful garden. 
Jaikie did not believe that there was another garden so 
large and fine in all the world. Jiminy said so, and he 
was the minister s son and had been at Dalmarnock 
where the five steeples are, with the stars sitting on the 
tops of them. The stars are the tops of steeples which 
one cannot see for the darkness of the night. In the 
daytime, just the other way about, one sees the steeples, 
but cannot see the stars. Jiminy was also the authority 
for these statements. He was, as we said before, a 
minister's son, and, of course, knew everything. Jaikie’s 
father was an elder, and did not admire the father of 
Jiminy at all ; but his son made it up by holding Jiminy 
infallible. 


44 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


There was a great dispute in the little Kirk of the 
Marrow. Long ago, long before these boys were born, 
or their grandfathers either, a book had been carried up 
from England in an old soldier’s satchel which had set 
all Scotland by the ears. Kirks had been split, ministers 
had been deposed, new denominations had been formed 
over the old soldier’s wallet book. Now, a hundred 
years later, the little Kirk of the Marrow in the village 
of Muirgate was in the ‘ deed thraws ’ of a disruption. 
The Reverend Simon Adam, locally known as ‘ Maister 
Aydam,’ with the larger portion of the congregation, 
was for following the majority of the congregations of 
the Kirk of the Marrow, scattered over the Southern 
Uplands, into the larger fold of one of the better-known 
evangelical communions of Scotland. Ebenezer Lang- 
bakkit, Jaikie’s father, led the opposition to this union, 
and threatened to carry their dislike even to the 
extremity of extruding the minister from his manse and 
kailyard, and barring the door of the kirk in his face, 
because he had forsworn his ordination vows, and gone 
back from the pure doctrine and practice of the ‘ Marrow- 
men,’ as laid down in the famous controversy by Thomas 
Boston and other precious and savoury divines. 

Thus far the war of the Marrow Kirk of Muirgate. 
But the two little boys wotted little of it as they played 
together in that large garden during the long-continued 
heats of the Dry Summer. The garden was cut up 
into squares by walks which ran at right angles to one 
another. There were square plots of gooseberry bushes, 
square wildernesses of pea-sticks, and square strawberry 
beds in that corner where it was forbidden for small, 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


45 


sweet-toothed boys to go. At the upper end an orchard 
ran right across, every tree in which was climbable, and 
a wall, with a flight of steps over into a field, bounded 
all. Great trees, generations old, surrounded the garden 
and orchard, and cast here and there throughout it cir- 
cular plots of pleasant shade amid the garden squares. 
It was, said the wiseacres, too much buried in foliage to 
make the best of gardens. But it suited two small boys 
that summer very well. 

The boys did not go to school. Jiminy Adam had 
a brief and terrible struggle with the Latin verb every 
morning in his father’s study, whence he emerged to 
forget all about the matter for other twenty-three hours ; 
but Jaikie had no call to go to the school at all, for 
there was no school-board officer in those days, the 
dominie was infirm and old, and Jaikie’s father divided 
between plotting against Maister Aydam and a course 
of black, gloomy drinking in his own house. 

Week after week the climax of discontent approached. 
The true Marrowmen, as Eby Langbakkit’s party called 
themselves, were all grim men determined not to com- 
pany with those who had but recently separated from 
an ‘ Erastian and Malignant’ Establishment, and who 
had never purged themselves from their guilty com- 
pliance. Nor would they permit the kirk of bygone 
valiant protestings to be longer desecrated by the 
services of a man like Mr. Adam, who had conformed 
to the too easy temper of the times. 

Thus far had the matter gone when one day Jiminy 
and Jaikie played together by the orchard wall. They 
were very small boys, and as there were no girls about, 


46 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


or Other boys to reproach them for the childishness, they 
played at building houses and living in them. Jiminy 
was architect, and directed the operations, ordering Jaikie 
about like a hod-carrier to fetch and carry for him all 
day long. When he threw a load of stones at him dis- 
dainfully, Jaikie was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy. 
Jaikie adored all who abused him, if only they allowed 
him to worship them. Jiminy had no objection. Often 
Jaikie would have liked to inhabit for a little one of the 
splendid mansions which he toiled in the sweat of his 
brow to erect. But it was not to be. As soon as a 
plan was completed, after one discontented survey, Jiminy 
would kick down all their hard work and start over 
again on a new and improved plan. Once Jaikie begged 
Jiminy not to kick down a specially noble tower built 
with mud, which Jaikie had laboured like a Hebrew 
slave bondaging in Egypt, to bring up from the river. 
Then Jiminy kicked Jaikie for interfering where he had 
no business, which sent that hero-worshipper into the 
seventh heaven of happiness. 

Couched in his bunk at nights, beneath the little 
gable window in the attic, Jaikie could hear the con- 
fabulations of the Marrowmen who came to receive 
their instructions from that grim sectary, Eby Lang- 
bakkit. It was some time before Jaikie paid any heed 
to these gatherings. He had been accustomed to such 
silent and dour assemblies downstairs as long as he 
could remember, with a black bottle of whisky sitting in 
the middle of the table, and his father casting a wary 
eye at each man as he took his dram to see that no 
advantage was taken. If there were, Ebenezer Lang- 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


47 


bakkit checked the offender sharply, as, indeed, he had 
every right to do, being an elder. 

Lately, however, stirred to some attention by Jiminy's 
dark hints of plots and conspiracies, he had taken to 
crawling out of his bed every night and lying at the 
top of the ladder, a shivering little phantom, listening 
to the talk that went on beneath. 

'Shall we be degradit and abolished,' said Jaikie's 
father, ‘ swallowed quick by the whore that sitteth on 
the Seven Hills?' 

Murmurs of applause. ‘ 'Deed, they're little better ! ' 

‘ Shall the truth-forsaking hireling of the flock lead 
away his silly sheep, and also keep possession of the 
sheep-fold? Nay, verily! The faithful must take and 
the contending remnant must possess 1 ' 

All this was not much to the purpose, and Jaikie 
dovered over to sleep. When he awoke his father was 
giving more understandable directions. 

‘You, John Howieson, are to tak' three wi' you, an' 
lie in the trees at the foot o' the orchard ; then when 
ye see Bell Girmory gaun doon to the village with a 
message — I’ll see that she gangs — ye’ll gang yer ways 
up and tak' possession o' the manse. The minister 
will no' be hame for the maitter o’ an 'oor. He’ll be 
preachin' at Cairn Edward, as I telled ye. Then yince 
in the manse, ye maun haud it against a' comers by 
virtue o’ the deeds and charters that I gie ye. When 
he brings ye to the question, ye are to say to him that 
all his household goods will be cared for and delivered 
to him upon demand, and that a decent lodging has ^ 
been bespoken for him in the house of Elspeth Mac- 


48 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


Clevver, that’s a decent woman, an’ clean, though no 
better than a Burgher. 

‘ Meanwhile, the lave o’ ye are to come wi’ me an* 
we are in like manner to baud the kirk. Come weel 
providit, for we’re to haud it a’ day on Saturday, and a’ 
the nicht likewise, till Zechariah Mosshaggs, that true 
servant of the Lord, shall come to preach the kirk vacant 
in the name of the Faithful Remnant of the Synod of 
the Marrowmen.’ 

Jaikie had not been asleep all this time. He listened 
as he never listened before, except when Jiminy was 
giving his orders and looking as if he were going to 
kick. 

All night Jaikie lay awake till the early light bright- 
ened to another dewless morning, for the earth was dun 
and dusty with the parching of the sun. As soon as it 
was light, Jaikie slid down the trunk of the rowan tree 
which threw a convenient branch to his window, to 
make a staircase for a little boy in a hurry, who might 
not wish to disturb his father with his late bedding or 
his early rising. The bare legs of Jaikie paddled 
through the dust and over the burnt-up russet grass, 
across the dry bed of the burn to Jiminy’s window. 
Here he whistled that peculiar call which Jiminy had 
revealed to him under the dreadful shadow of night, in 
the dusky cavern of the Bloody Hand (known in the 
daytime as the manse potato house), a call which Jaikie 
believed to be connected with the black art, and in case 
of revealing the secret of which he was under solemn 
obligation, sealed with his blood, to cut his throat and 
afterwards to be kicked black and blue by Jiminy, who 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


49 


was a master of the darkest wizardry, according to his 
own account. 

As he continued to whistle, a large sea-shell, pink 
inside, swung down from an upper window and impinged 
abruptly on his bare leg. 

‘ Ow ! ’ said Jaikie. 

‘Stop that horrid noise. That’ll learn ye. You’ll 
wakken my father!’ said Jiminy, in his nightdress. 
‘ What d’ye want at ony rate at this time in the 
mornin’ ? ’ 

‘ Come doon an’ I’ll tell ye ; I canna cry it up there.’ 

‘ Get away. I’m no’ cornin’ doon in the middle o’ 
the nicht,’ said Jiminy, who had lapsed into the Doric 
of his play hours. 

‘O Jiminy, ye micht come doon. It’s an awfu’-like 
thing I hae to tell ye. It’s aboot yer faither. Ye 
maun come doon the noo. I’ll let ye kick me for hale 
five meenites gin ye like.’ 

Filial affection or the prospect of healthy leg-exercise 
brought Jiminy down with a run, and the two boys 
wandered off into the wood in close confabulation. 

It was the Saturday morning of the plot. The 
minister who stood so near the brink of his extrusion 
was on his way home from Cairn Edward, where he 
had been ‘ daubing with untempered mortar,’ as Eby 
Langbakkit said, by preaching in an Uncovenanted 
Kirk. 

Round the corner of the orchard, dividing into two 
bands as they came, stole the Faithful Remnant to take 
possession of the kirk and manse into which Simon 
Adam was no more to come. Bell Girmory duly 


50 


THE SrLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


departed through the trees with her sun-bonnet on, in 
the direction of the village. She had a large basket 
over her arm. 

John Howieson and his henchmen took the manse 
in front and rear ; but the front door, which had only- 
been shut at night and never locked even then, was now 
bolted and barred. The back door was also firmly 
locked, and when John Howieson went to lift the 
kitchen window, the secret of which he knew from 
having courted (unsuccessfully) numerous manse lasses, 
Bell’s predecessors, he recoiled in sudden amazement. 
He had looked down the bell mouth of an ancient 
blunderbuss, into which the sun shone so plain that, as 
he said afterwards, ‘ Man, I could hae coontit the lead 
draps at the buddom o’ her I ’ 

This weapon of war was in the hands of a militant 
small boy. The council of war had forgotten to reckon 
with Jiminy ; still more, they had not taken Jaikie into 
account. They soon had to do so, for Jaikie was under 
orders from ‘General’ Jiminy, and had every intention 
of obeying them. 

Ebenezer Langbakkit had gone openly with half a 
dozen others to take possession of the kirk at twelve of 
the clock. He had made a key for the lock, and 
anticipated no difficulty. His surprise was great when 
he found that there was a key already in the lock on 
the inside. He tried the southern door with a similar 
effect. He put his fingers through the hole by which, 
as in a stable door, the inside latch was lifted, but 
within that aperture his finger encountered something 
hard and cold. He applied his eye, and, just as John 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


51 


Howieson was doing at that moment over at the manse, 
he found himself looking down the barrel of a gun. 
The sensation is not an agreeable one even to an elder 
of the Kirk of the Marrow. Looking through the 
window precariously, from the branches of a neighbour- 
ing tree, his surprise was not lessened and his anger 
greatly increased by seeing his own son, Jaikie, marching 
up and down the aisle, with a gun on his shoulder, as 
proud and erect as a veteran of Ramillies. 

‘Open the door this instant, Jaikie!’ he thundered, 
black anger sitting on him like the night. But Jaikie 
answered not a word. He had his orders from Jiminy. 

From window to window thundered Eby Langbakkit, 
but there was no way of entrance. 

At each window and door stood the inevitable small 
boy with the large gun, and the reflection lay heavily 
on all the party that a small boy with a man’s gun is 
more to be feared than a large man with a boy’s gun. 
A commonplace thought, but one with practical bearing 
at that moment to the sect of Eby Langbakkit. 

Then Eby Langbakkit swore a great oath that in 
that kirk he would be, though he swung for it. 

‘ Bring me the poother flask I ’ he ordered ; but no 
man gave to him, for they feared what they saw in his 
face. 

‘Ye’ll no’ hurt the laddie. He’s your ain son,’ said 
one to him. 

‘ Then he’s no’ yours,’ he answered, blackly ; ‘ so 
mind your ain business.’ 

He got his own powder flask, inserted a slow match 
into it, and placed it beneath the door. Then he stood 

E 


52 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


apart waiting for the event. There was a loud report, 
an instant rush of white smoke, and the side of the flask 
buried itself in the tree close to the elder’s head. 
When the smoke cleared away the kirk door lay on its 
side, having fallen heavily inward. There was no 
small boy to be seen from end to end of the empty 
kirk. Langbakkit sprang forward in fierce anger that 
his son had escaped without his deserts. The silence 
and chill of the empty kirk alone met him. 

He was about to step over the fallen door, when out 
from beneath the heavy iron - studded oak he saw 
stealing a tiny thread of red. Something struck him 
to the heart. He pressed his hand on his breast and 
stood, not daring to go farther. 

‘ Mr. Langbakkit, what is the meaning of this ? ’ 
said the calm voice of the minister, Mr. Adam. No one 
replied. The protest died out at the sight of that faint 
streak of liquid scarlet and the fear of what lay unseen 
beneath the fallen door. 

* Saunders Grierson and David Robb, I command 
you, help me to lift the door of the house of God ! ’ 
said the minister. 

The two men named approached awkwardly, and 
between them the three lifted the heavy door. Beneath 
it lay the crushed and torn body of a boy, still clasping 
firmly an iron tube thrust into a rough lump of wood. 
He must have stood quite close to the door when the 
flask exploded, for the explosion had torn the clothes 
almost off his poor body. 

The minister raised him tenderly in his arms, 
and wiped his face very gently with his napkin. 


THE SPLIT IN THE MARROW KIRK 


53 


The sight of this seemed to awaken Ebenezer Lang- 
bakkit. 

‘ Give me my dead/ he said, suddenly and roughly. 
‘ The Lord has stricken me. I am a man of violence ! ^ 

So saying he strode away, bowed with his burden. 

Now, this is properly the end of the story of the 
split in the Marrow Kirk, but for the sake of some who 
may love Jaikie, it is enough to say that, though sore 
wounded, he did not die. When Jiminy went to see 
him, he lay a long time silently holding his friend’s 
hand. 

‘ I couldna keep them oot, Jiminy, but I did my 
best. Ye’ll no’ hae to kick me for’t when I get better.’ 

And Jiminy never kicked him any more. When 
it was time for Jiminy to go to college he had for com- 
panion, at Maister Adam’s expense, a lame lad with a 
beautiful countenance. His name was Jaikie. 


THE PROBATIONER 


HOMAS TODD has just received a 
call to the Kirk of Dowiedens, some- 
where over on Tweedside, so he can 
hardly be called a minister of our 
countryside ; but there need be no 
objection if the lad is allowed to 
say his say among the rest, for he 
belongs to this part of the country, 
and his father before him. He has 
been a long time a probationer 
— six year and more — so that there 
were some that said that he would 
never wag his head but in another 
man’s pulpit. But Tam cheated 
them all, for he is to be* ordained to the pastoral charge 
of Dowiedens, a fortnight come Friday. It’s not to say 
a large parish, being wide scattered, with as much 
exercise for the legs as for the brains in looking after 
the fowk. There are but few parishioners, only, as 
Tammas says, ‘they are as ill to please as Saint 
George’s itsel’ ! ’ Tammas has been biding with us at 
Drumquhat ; he’s a great favourite with the mistress. 



THE PROBATIONER 


55 


Many is the girdleful of crumpy cakes that she will 
bake for him, when I dare not suggest the like to her 
— no, not for my life. 

‘ Hae ye nae sense ava', Saunders MaWhurr, to come 
fleechin’ wi’ me to bake ye short-breed an’ sic like, wi’ 
the pigs to feed an’ the hervesters cornin’ in gilravagin’ 
wi’ hunger at six o’clock ? Think shame o’ yer bairnly 
weys, man ! ’ 

But if Tammas Todd comes ben an’ sits doon, the 
wife’ll gie her ban’s a dicht, slip aff her apron, an’ come 
in to hear aboot Enbro’ an’ the laddie’s landladies, and 
their awfu’ wickednesses wi’ the coals an’ the butter, till 
she’ll say, ‘ Come awa’ to the kitchen, an’ I can be 
bakin’ a bit sweet cake for the tea — the guidman’s fell 
fond o’t ! ’ 

The Almichty in His wonderful providence made 
mony curious things, but nane o’ them so queer an’ 
contrary as the weemen-fowk. This is what I says to 
myself, but I have more sense than to say it aloud. I’ll 
warrant that King Solomon among his other wisdom 
learned to baud his tongue before he got a? many as 
three hunder wives. 

This is what the laddie said sitting on the table at 
the end of the bake-board. Tammas is gettin’ on for 
thirty, but in some things it’s strange to see him so keen 
of sweet things. He’ll take up a bit o’ the dough that 
the wife is rolling out wi’ her wooden pin, and he eats 
it like a laddie hame from the school ; but my certie, I 
would like to see ony one of her ain try that ; he would 
get a ring on the side of the head that would learn 
him to leave his mither alone when she was baking. 


56 


THE PROBATIONER 


But Tammas could aye get the soft side of the 
mistress. 

‘ We’ll no’ hae to ca’ ye “ Tammas ” when ye get to 
be a placed minister,’ says she, knowing brawly that 
the lad’ll be ‘ Tammas ’ to all at Drumquhat till his 
dying day. 

‘ If ye dinna,’ says he, ‘ I’ll never look near the bit’ 
Tammas can speak the English as weel as onybody, but 
when he gets among his own folk he prides himself on 
lapsing, so to speak, into the broadest Gallowa’. He 
laughs at me for being fond of writing in proper English. 
He says that I need not try it, for when I do my best, 
every sentence has got the ' Gallowa’ lug-mark ’ plain 
on it. But this is his nonsense. 

‘Ye maun hae had some queer bars, Tammas, in 
your time,’ said the mistress. 

Tammas gied a bit smile, and said with the pleased 
look that a man has when he’s accused of something 
that he likes to hear about, like a pussy strokit the richt 
way — I mind weel mysel’ walking three miles to be 
tormented about Jessie Scott before we were married — 
‘ Nocht to speak aboot,’ says he, ‘ but of coorse, a man 
canna gang aboot six year wi’ a pokemantie withoot 
seein’ somethin’ o’ baith sides o’ life.’ 

‘Ye’ll hae been in a feck o’ manses in yer time, 
Tammas ? ’ 

‘ Ay, Mrs. MaWhurr,’ says he, ‘ and let me tell you, 
that there’s no sic hooses as manses in Scotland, or ony- 
where else — that is,’ he says, ‘ nine oot o’ every ten o’ 
them. I wad be an ingrate to say onything else, for in 
nearly every instance I have been treated, no like a puir 


THE PROBATIONER 


57 


probationer preachin’ for his guinea fee and gaun off 
like a beggar wi’ his awmus on Monday mornin’, but 
like a verra prince. I hae memories o’ the mistresses o’ 
the manses o’ Scotian’ that will never be forgotten ! ’ 

‘ An’ o’ the dochters o’ the manses ? ’ says I, just 
above my breath. Then there was a warm colour rose 
to the cheek of the minister-elect of the Dowiedens, and 
mantled on his brow, but he said bravely : 

‘ Ay, an’ the lasses were kind to me, they were 
that.’ 

‘ When is’t to be ? ’ says I. 

‘ Let the lad alane, can ye no, Saunders MaWhurr ; 
ye’re never dune wi’ yer fule talk,’ says my wife. She 
had been talking even on the whole night, and I had 
said maybe a dozen words. But I let that pass. 

‘ Of coorse, among so mony there were bun’ to be 
some queer yins ? ’ suggested my wife, fishing in the 
young man’s shallow water. The wife can draw most 
folks, but Saunders MaWhurr has leeved ower lang wi’ 
her not to see through her wiles. 

‘ Weel, I mind,’ says Tammas Todd, ‘ o’ yince being 
askit to preach at a certain place ; I’ll no say where, 
nor I’ll no tell ye gin ye speer. It was maybes half- 
past seeven when I got to the manse, an’ I had had a 
long journey. 

‘ “ Ye’ll be tired an’ hungry,” said the mistress. 
“Ye’ll be wantin’ to gang sune to your bed.” Hungry 
I was, but to gang sune to your bed is no so common 
amang us lads wi’ the black bag ; but I said nocht, and 
took my cup o’ tea, an’ some bread and butter. “ Tak’ 
plenty o’ the bread an’ butter,” she says ; “ we hae nae 


58 


THE PROBATIONER 


cauld meat/’ I wad hae been gled to see some o’ that 
same, but it wasna for me to say onything. 

‘ Aboot nine I saw some o’ them gettin’ partic’lar 
fidgety like, gaun oot an’ in, yin sayin’, “ Is Mr. Todd’s 
room ready ? ” an’ another yin rinnin’ doon stairs cryin’ 
to somebody in the kitchen, “ Can ye no wait awee ? ” 

‘ Then I was askit to tak’ the buik, an’ as sune as 
ever I gat up the mistress brocht in my bedroom can’le. 
‘ Yer room’s ready whenever ye like,’ she says. This 
was what I wad ca’ a solid kind o’ hint, aboot as braid 
as it’s lang, an’ it was mair than eneuch for me, so I 
took baith hint an’ can’le, an’ gaed my ways. 

‘ But I hadna been ten meenutes in my room when 
I took a thocht to gie my sermons for the morn a -bit 
look, but I fand that I had left my Bible in the room 
where I had my tea. So withoot a thocht doon I gaed 
to get the buik, an’ when I opened the door what do ye 
think I saw ? ’ 

We were silent every one. 

‘ Weel, I saw the hale family sittin’ doon to a hot 
supper ! ’ 

‘ Davert ! that cowes a’,’ said my wife, her hospit- 
able soul up in arms. ‘ An’ tell me, whatever did ye 
do?’ 

‘ Well,’ said Tammas Todd, ‘ I hae lookit in every 
buik o’ Guid Mainners^ an’ in a’ the Guides to Polite 
Society, but I canna find a word in ony yin o’ them 
that tells me what I should hae dune.’ 

‘ I daresay no, ye were in no polite society that 
nicht ! ’ said Mrs. MaWhurr ; ‘ but tell me, what did yc 
do?’ 


THE PROBATIONER 


59 


‘ Weel/ said Tammas, ' I juist cam’ my ways up the 
stair again, an’ took the lave o’ the sandwiches that the 
minister’s wife, whas hoose I had left that mornin’, had 
kindly pitten up for me.’ 

‘ The Lord be thankit, they’re no a’ alike,’ said my 
wife, devoutly. 

‘ Na, far frae that,’ said Tammas Todd; ‘deed I’m 
ashamed to tell ye o’ this yin, but there’s no sic anither 
in a’ Scotian’, I’se warrant. An’ when I gaed back to 
the leddy’s hoose that gied me the sandwiches, as I 
did on the followin’ Setterday, she was like to greet to 
think on the wey that I had been used. She aye said 
that I minded her o’ her ain boy that she had lost — 
‘ My puir lad ! ’ she says, an’ she cam’ near takin’ me 
roun’ the neck, she was that sair pitten aboot.’ 

‘ Maybes the dochter did it a’thegither,’ says I, for a 
wee bird had brocht the news that the manse at Dowie- 
dens wasna lang to be withoot a mistress. 

‘ Saunders MaWhurr ’ began my wife in the 

voice that she uses when the byre lass is ower lang in 
bringin’ in the kye. 

‘ Never mind him, Mrs. MaWhurr, he maun hae been 
a gey boy himsel’ to hae the lasses so constant in his 
mind ! ’ said Tammas, which was a most uncalled-for 
observe. 

‘ Ye’ll be a’ by wi’ probationerin noo, Tammas ? ’ says 
I, to gie him a new lead. 

‘ Weel, I had a sma’ experience Sabbath eight days, 
nae farther gane,’ said he. ‘ I had occasion to look in 
at the kirk offices to see old “ Jeremiah ” — him that sen’s 
us to oor preachin’ places, ye ken, an’ says he, “ Man, ye 


6o 


THE PROBATIONER 


micht gang doon to Elvanby, it’ll no’ be oot o’ yer 
wey gin ye’re gaun doon to the Border Country ony- 


‘ On yer wey to the manse whaur the fowk tak’ ye 
roon the neck, nae doot ! ’ says I. 

My wife gied me a look that wad hae speaned a foal, 
but Tammas Todd never let on. 

* So I gaed doon wi’ the efternoon train to Elvanby, 
which is a biggish place on the railway line. I got 
there ower in the forenicht. It was as dark as the guid- 
man’s snuff-box, an’ rainin’ in sheets. I had a heavy 
bag, for I had my buiks to prepare for my ordina- 
tion ’ 

‘ An’ yer co-ordination too, no doot,’ says I, ‘ for wi’ 
you ministers I hae noticed that the ordination comes 
first, an’ syne the co-ordination, but ye’re maistly sunest 
ready for the co-ordination. The last first, that’s your 
motto,’ says I. 

‘ I dinna understand a word ye’re sayin’,’ says he ; 
‘ye’re haiverin’, guidman.’ 

‘ Dinna be ashamed o’t, my young man,’ says I. ‘ It’s 
a hantle easier gettin’ a lass than a kirk ony day ! ’ 
says I. 

‘ And that’s a true word,’ said the probationer of six 
years’ standing. 

‘ So,’ continued Tammas, ‘ I speered at the porter at 
the station the wey to the manse. “ It’s at the fit o’ the 
Back Street,” says he, “ but somebody tolled me that he 
was no’ leevin’ in’t noo ; but gang ye ower there to the 
shop o’ yin o’ the elders, an’ he’ll be sure to ken.” 

‘ The master was oot, but a laddie tolled me that the 


THE PROBATIONER 


6i 


minister was leevin' aboot twa mile oot the Carlisle Road, 
but he didna think that he was at hame, for there had 
been naething sent up to the hoose for a month. This 
was real cheerfu' hearin^ for me wi’ my heavy bag and 
an umbrella, but there was naething for it but to gang 
on. So I trudged away doon the Carlisle Road, glaur 
to the oxters, an' changin' my bag frae the yae side to 
the ither as if I war swingin' it for a wager. I speered 
at every hoose, but the answer was aye, “ It's aboot a 
mile farther doon ! ” They maun be poor road surveyors 
in that direction, for their miles are like sea miles for 
length. 

‘ At the hinner en' I fand the hoose, by scartin' a 
match an' readin' the plate on the gate. I rang the 
bell, but a' was in darkness. I stood a gey while in the 
rain, an' I declare that my thochts were no ministerial. 

‘ Presently a wunda' gaes up somewhere in the 
garret stories, an' a heid pops oot. 

‘ “ Fa' be you ? " it says. 

‘ “ I'm the minister that's to preach for Mr. Fergusson 
the morn," says I, “ an' I'll thank you to let me in oot 
o' the rain.” 

‘ “ I ken nocht aboot you ! ” it says, and doon gaed 
the wunda'. 

‘ Noo I tell you that if that woman hadna letten me 
in at that time o' nicht I wad hae driven a stane through 
the gless, if they had had me afore the Presbytery 
for't. But in a wee the door opened an' the lassie lets 
me in. 

* She had just come from the Aberdeenshire Deeside 
that day, and was as great a stranger as myself. But 


62 


THE PROBATIONER 


yince in, she did verra weel for my comfort. But as 
she kenned naething about the hours of worship I had 
to gang awa’ doon to the toon early on the neest mornin’ 
to find oot when the service was. Then back up I cam’ 
again for the sermons an’ my breakfast. The service 
was at twal, an’ aboot half-past eleeven I was at the 
kirk, an’ sittin’ waitin’ in the vestry for somebody to 
come to speak to me, for I had spoken to nobody bena 
the servant lass frae Aberdeen an’ the shop laddie 
that I had met on the street. 

‘ As I sat in the vestry I could hear them firslin 
aboot the door, an’ the fowk cornin’ in, but naebody 
lookit near me till maybe five meenites to twal’. Then 
a man cam’ in that I took to be the precentor, so I gied 
him what I usually gied to toun kirks, a psalm, a para- 
phrase, an’ twa hymns. He took them, put on his 
glesses, an’ lookit at my writin’ gye scornfu’ like. 

‘‘‘Hymns!” he says. ‘ Na, we sing nae hymns 
here — na — an’ we’re nane sae carin’ aboot paraphrases, 
neyther 1 ” 

‘ This was a thocht discouragin’, but I said that I 
would gladly gie him all the four psalms, that I could 
easily find psalms to suit my subject. 

‘ “ Ay, an’ I think they micht hae served ye too ” says 
he. 

‘ I went up to the pulpit and preached, but what I 
said I do not ken ; I had gotten my sermon frae the 
precentor, and felt juist like a schule-boy that has come 
to the dominie withoot his lesson. When I had feen- 
ished I thocht that some o’ the elders wad speak to me, 
but not a one showed face. I gaed into the vestry an’ 


THE PROBATIONER 


63 


got my hat, an* so back to the manse on the Carlisle 
Road. 

‘ A laddie met me at the gate. “ You’re the minister 
that preached the day — hae ! ” says he. It was a note 
frae somebody I didna ken tellin’ me that I was 
expected to address the Sabbath Schule that efternune 
at three o’clock. So I slippit doon, an’ fand that the 
schule only gaed in at that hour. So I had to wait 
sittin’ by mysel’ till aboot the half-hour. Then a man 
cam’ an’ chappit me on the shoother, “Ye’ll hae twunty 
meenites,” he says. 

‘ “ Twunty meenites ? ” says I, no seein’ his drift. 

‘ “ Ay,” he says, “ to address the bairns ! ” 

‘ So I talked to the bairns for a wee, a job I aye 
likit, an’ at the end I pat up a prayer and sat for maybes 
half a meenit efter withoot lookin’ up. Wull you 
believe me,’ said the probationer, ‘ that when I liftit my 
heid there wasna a body, bairn, teacher, or superintendent, 
in the place ? 

‘ So yince mair gaed I back alang that weary Carlisle 
Road withoot a word frae leevin’ craitur. 

‘ “ Heaven do so to me an’ more also,” said I to 
mysel’, “ if I ever mislippen a probationer when yince 
I’m settled in the Dowiedens ! ” Next mornin’ I raise 
gye an’ early, an’ shook off the dust of Elvanby frae 
my feet for a testimony again an unkindly parish, an’ 
a minister and people that muzzled into silence the ox 
that treadeth out the corn, though I fear that I gied 
hem mair cauff than corn that day.’ 

‘ And nae wunner,’ said Mrs. MaWhurr. 

‘ They wad just be blate to pit themsel’s forrit, 


64 


THE PROBATIONER 


Tammas ! * said I. ‘ They wadna like to speak to a 
strainge minister/ 

‘ Strainge minister here, strainge minister there. I’ll 
gang nae mair to yon toon ! ’ says he. ‘ They made 
me fine an’ blate. When I’m settled in the 
Dowiedens ’ 

‘ An’ mairrit to that wifie’s dochter that pat her 
airms ’ 

‘ Hand yer tongue, man ! ’ cried my mistress to me 
in a mainner that couldna be ca’ed mair nor ceevil. 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 



ND I further intimate/ said the 
minister, ‘that I will preach this 
evening at Cauldshaws, and my 
text will be from the ninth chapter 
of the book of Ecclesiastes and the tenth verse, “What- 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” ’ 
‘Save us,’ said Janet MacTaggart, ‘he’s clean for- 
gotten “if it be the Lord’s wull.” Maybe he’ll be for 
gaun whether it’s His wull or no’ — he’s a sair masterfu’ 
man, the minister ; but he comes frae the Machars,^ an’ 
kens little aboot the jealous God we hae amang the 
hills o’ Gallowa’ ! ’ 

The minister continued, in the same high, level tone 
in which he did his preaching, ‘There are a number of 
sluggards who lay the weight of their own laziness on 
the Almighty, saying, “ I am a worm and no man — 
how should I strive with my Maker ? ” whenever they 
are at strife with their own sluggishness. There will 
be a word for all such this evening at the farmtown of 


1 The Eastern Lowlands of Wigtonshire. 


66 THE LAMMAS PREACHING \ 

Cauldshaws, presently occupied by Gilbert M‘Kissock — 
public worship to begin at seven o’clock/ 

The congregation of Barnessock kirk tumbled 
amicably over its own heels with eagerness to get into 
the kirkyaird in order to settle the momentous question, 
‘ Wha’s back was he on the day ? ’ 

Robert Kirk, Carsethorn, had a packet of pepper- 
mint lozenges in the crown of his ‘ lum ’ hat — deponed 
to by Elizabeth Douglas or Barr, in Barnbogrie, whose 
husband, Weelum Barr, put on the hat of the aforesaid 
Robert Kirk by mistake for his own, whereupon the 
peppermints fell to the floor and rolled under the pews 
in most unseemly fashion. Elizabeth Kirk is of opinion 
that this should be brought to the notice of Session, she 
herself always taking her peppermint while genteelly 
wiping her mouth with the corner of her handkerchief. 
Robert Kirk, on being put to the question, admits the 
fact, but says that it was his wife put them there to 
be near her hand. 

The minister, however, ready with his word, brought 
him to shame by saying, ‘ O Robert, Robert, that 
was just what Adam said, “ The woman Thou 
gavest me, she gave me to eat ! ” ’ The aforesaid 
Robert Kirk thinks that it is meddling with the original 
Hebrew to apply this to peppermints, and also says 
that Elizabeth Kirk is an impident besom, and further- 
more that, as all the country well knows (Here the 

chronicler omits much matter actionable in the civil 
courts of the realm). 

‘Janet,’ said the minister to his housekeeper, ‘I 
am to preach to-night at Cauldshaws on the text. 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


67 


“ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might.” ^ 

‘ I ken,’ said Janet, ‘ I saw it on yer desk. I pat it 
ablow the clock for fear the wun’s o’ heeven micht blaw 
it awa’ like chaff, an’ you couldna do wantin’ it ! ’ 

‘Janet MacTaggart,’ said the minister, tartly, ‘bring 
in the denner, and do not meddle with what does not 
concern you.’ 

Janet could not abide read sermons ; her natural 
woman rose against them. She knew, as she had said, 
that God was a jealous God, and, with regard to the 
minister, she looked upon herself as His vicegerent. 

‘ He’s young an’ terrable ram-stam an’ opeenionated 
— fu’ o’ buik-lear, but wi’ little gracious experience. 
For a’ that, the root o’ the maitter ’s in ’im,’ said Janet, 
not unhopefully. 

‘ I’m gaun to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text’s 
“ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might,” ’ said the minister to the precentor that after- 
noon, on the manse doorstep. 

‘ The Lord’s no’ in a’ his thochts. I’ll gang wi’ the 
lad mysel’,’ said the precentor. 

Now, Galloway is so much out of the world that the 
Almighty has not there lifted His hand from reward 
and punishment, from guiding and restraining, as He ' 
has done in big towns where everything goes by 
machinery. Man may say that there is no God when 
he only sees a handbreadth of smoky heaven between 
the chimney-pots ; but out on the fields of oats and 
bear, and up on the screes of the hillsides, where the 
mother granite sticks her bleaching ribs through the 

F 


68 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


heather, men have reached great assurance on this and 
other matters. 

The burns were running red with the mighty July 
rain when Douglas Maclellan started over the meadows 
and moors to preach his sermon at the farmtown of 
Cauldshaws. He had thanked the Lord that morning 
in his opening prayer for ‘ the bounteous rain wherewith 
He had seen meet to refresh His weary heritage.’ 

His congregation silently acquiesced, ‘ for what,’ said 
they, ‘ could a man from the Machars be expected to 
ken about meadow hay ? ’ 

When the minister and the precentor got to the foot 
of the manse loaning, they came upon the parish ne’er- 
do-weel, Ebie Kirgan, who kept himself in employment 
by constantly scratching his head, trying to think of 
something to do, and whose clothes were constructed 
on the latest sanitary principles of ventilation. The 
ruins of Ebie’s hat were usually tipped over one eye 
for enlarged facilities of scratching in the rear. 

‘ If it’s yer wull, minister. I’ll come to hear ye the 
nicht. It’s drawing to mair rain. I’m thinkin’ ! ’ said 
the Scarecrow. 

‘ I hope the discourse may be profitable to you, 
Ebenezer, for, as I intimated this morning, I am to 
preach from the text, ‘‘ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to 
do, do it with thy might.” ’ 

‘ Ay, minister,’ said Ebie, relieving his right hand, 
and tipping his hat over the other eye to give his left 
free play. So the three struck over the fields, making 
for the thorn tree at the corner, where Robert Kirk’i? 
dyke dipped into the standing water of the meadow. 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


69 


‘ Do you think ye can manage it, Maister Maclellan ? ’ 
said the precentor. ‘Ye’re wat half-way up the leg 
already.’ 

‘ An’ there’s sax feet o’ black moss water in the 
Laneburn as sure as I’m a leevin’ sowl,’ added Ebie 
Kirgan. 

‘ I’m to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text is, 
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might ! ” ’ said the minister, stubbornly glooming from 
under the eaves of his eyebrows as the swarthy men 
from the Machars are wont to do. His companions 
said no more. They came to Camelon Lane, where 
usually Robert Kirk had a leaping pole on either bank 
to assist the traveller across, but both poles had gone 
down the water in the morning to look for Robert’s 
meadow hay. 

‘ Tak’ care, Maister Maclellan, ye’ll be in deep water 
afore ye ken. O man, ye had far better turn ! ’ 

The precentor stood up to his knees in water on 
what had once been the bank, and wrung his hands. 
But the minister pushed steadily ahead into the turbid 
and sluggish water. 

‘ I canna come, oh, I canna come, for I’m a man 
that has a family.’ 

‘ It’s no’ your work ; stay where ye are,’ cried the 
minister, without looking over his shoulder ; ‘ but as for 
me. I’m intimated to preach this night at Cauldshaws, 
and my text ’ 

Here he stepped into a deep hole, and his text was 
suddenly shut within him by the gurgle of moss water 
in his throat. His arms rose above the surface like the 


70 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


black spars of a windmill. But Ebie Kirgan sculled 
himself swiftly out, swimming with his shoeless feet, 
and pushed the minister before him to the further 
bank — the water gushing out of rents in his clothes as 
easily as out of the gills of a fish. 

The minister stood with unshaken confidence on 
the bank. He ran peat water like a spout in a 
thunder plump, and black rivulets of dye were trickling 
from under his hat down his brow and dripping from 
the end of his nose. 

‘ Then you’ll not come any farther ? ’ he called across 
to the precentor. 

‘ I canna, oh, I canna ; though I’m most awfu’ 
wullin’. Kirsty wad never forgie me gin I was to 
droon.’ 

‘ Then I’ll e’en have to raise the tune myself — * 
though three times “ Kilmarnock ” is a pity,’ said the 
minister, turning on his heel and striding away through 
the shallow sea, splashing the water as high as his head 
with a kind of headstrong glee which seemed to the 
precentor a direct defiance of Providence. Ebie Kirgan 
followed half a dozen steps behind. The support of 
the precentor’s lay semi-equality taken from him, he 
began to regret that he had come, and silently and 
ruefully plunged along after the minister through the 
waterlogged meadows. They came in time to the 
foot of Robert Kirk’s march dyke, and skirted it a 
hundred yards upward to avoid the deep pool in which 
the Laneburn waters were swirling. The minister 
climbed silently up the seven-foot dyke, pausing a 
second on the top to balance himself for his leap to 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


71 


the other side. As he did so Ebie Kirgan saw that 
the dyke was swaying to the fall, having been weakened 
by the rush of water on the farther side. He ran 
instantly at the minister, and gave him a push with 
both hands which caused Mr. Maclellan to alight on his 
feet clear of the falling stones. The dyke did not so 
much fall outward as settle down on its own ruins. 
Ebie fell on his face among the stones with the impetus 



THE FLOODED MEADOWS 


of his own eagerness. He arose, however, quickly — 
only limping slightly from what he called a ‘bit chack ’ 
on the leg between two stones. 

‘That was a merciful Providence, Ebenezer,’ said the 
minister, solemnly ; ‘ I hope you are duly thankful ! ’ 
‘Dod, 1 am that !’ replied Ebie, scratching his head 
vigorously with his right hand and rubbing his leg with 
his left. ‘ Gin I hadna gi’en ye that dunch, ye micht 
hae preachen nane at Cauldshaws this nicht.’ 

They now crossed a fairly level clover field, dank 


72 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


and laid with wet. The scent of the clover rose to 
their nostrils with almost overpowering force. There 
was not a breath of air. The sky was blue and the 
sun shining. Only a sullen roar came over the hill, 
sounding in the silence like the rush of a train over a 
far-away viaduct. 

‘ What is that ? ’ queried the minister, stopping to 
listen. 

Ebie took a brisk sidelong look at him. 

‘ I’m some dootsome that’ll be the Skyreburn coming 
doon aff o’ Cairnsmuir ! ’ 

The minister tramped unconcernedly on. Ebie 
Kirgan stared at him. 

‘ He canna ken what a “ Skyreburn warnin’ ” is — 
he’ll be thinkin’ it’s some bit Machars burn that the 
laddies set their whurlie mills in. But he’ll turn richt 
eneuch when he sees Skyreburn roarin’ reed in a 
Lammas flood. I’m thinkin’ ! ’ 

They took their way over the shoulder of the hill 
in the beautiful evening, leaning eagerly forward to get 
the flrst glimpse of the cause of that deep and resonant 
roar. In a moment they saw below them a narrow 
rock-walled gully, ten or flfteen yards across, fllled to 
the brim with rushing water. It was not black peat 
water like the Camelon Lane, but it ran red as keel, 
flecked now and then with a revolving white blur as 
one of the Cauldshaw’s sheep spun downward to the 
sea, with four black feet turned pitifully up to the blue 
sky. 

Ebie looked at the minister. ‘ He’ll turn noo if he’s 
mortal,’ he said. But the minister held on. He looked 



I 



THE LAMMAS FLOOD 





THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


75 


at the water up and down the roaring stream. On a 
hill above, the farmer of Cauldshaws, having driven all 
his remaining sheep together, sat down to watch. Seeing 
the minister, he stood up and excitedly waved him back. 
But Douglas Maclellan from the Machars never gave 
him a look, and his shouting was of less effect than if 
he had been crying to an untrained collie. 

The minister looked long up the stream, and at a 
point where the rocks came very close together, and 
many stunted pines were growing, he saw one which, 
having stood on the immediate brink, had been so 
much undercut that it leaned over the gully like a 
fishing-rod. With a keen glance along its length, the 
minister, jamming his dripping soft felt hat on the back 
of his head, was setting foot on the perilous slope of 
the uneven red-brown trunk, when Ebie Kirgan caught 
him sharply by the arm. 

‘ It’s no’ for me to speak to a minister at ordinar’ 
times,’ he stammered, gathering courage in his despera- 
tion ; ‘ but, oh, man, it’s fair murder to try to gang ower 
that water ! ’ 

The minister wrenched himself free, and sprang along 
the trunk with wonderful agility. 

‘ I’m intimated to preach at Cauldshaws this night, 
and my text is, “ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do 
it with thy might ! ” ’ he shouted. 

He made his way up and up the slope of the fir tree, 
which, having little grip of the rock, dipped and swayed 
under his tread. Ebie Kirgan fell on his knees and 
prayed aloud. He had not prayed since his stepmother 
boxed his ears for getting into bed without saying his 


76 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


prayers twenty years ago. This had set him against it. 
But he prayed now, and to infinitely more purpose than 
his minister had recently done. But when the climber 
had reached the branchy top, and was striving to get a 
few feet farther, in order to clear the surging linn before 
he made his spring, Ebie rose to his feet, leaving his 
prayer unfinished. He sent forth an almost animal 
shriek of terror. The tree roots cracked like breaking 
cables and slowly gave way, an avalanche of stones 
plumped into the whirl, and the top of the fir crashed 
downwards on the rocks of the opposite bank. 

‘ Oh, man, call on the name of the Lord ! ’ cried Ebie 
Kirgan, the ragged preacher, at the top of his voice. 

Then he saw something detach itself from the tree as 
it rebounded, and for a moment rise and fall black 
against the sunset. Then Ebie the Outcast fell on his 
face like a dead man. 

In the white coverleted ‘room’ of the farmtown of 
Cauldshaws, a white-faced lad lay with his eyes closed, 
and a wet cloth on his brow. A large-boned, red- 
cheeked, motherly woman stole to and fro with a foot 
as light as a fairy. The sleeper stirred and tried to 
lift an unavailing hand to his head. The mistress 
of Cauldshaws stole to his bedside as he opened his 
eyes. She laid a restraining hand on him as he strove 
to rise. 

‘ Let me up,’ said the minister, ‘ I must away, for I’m 
intimated to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text is, 
“ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might.” ’ 


THE LAMMAS PREACHING 


77 


‘ My bonny man/ said the goodwife, tenderly, ‘ you’ll 
preach best on the broad o’ yer back this mony a day, 
an’ when ye rise your best text will be, ‘‘ He sent 
from above, He took me, and drew me out of many 
waters !” ' 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCAN- 
SON, SCHOOLMASTER 


SOMETIME MINISTER OF THE PARISH OF 
SHAWS : DEPOSED FOR DRUNKENNESS 

Duncan Duncanson, parochial schoolmaster in the 
parish of Nether Dullarg, stood at the door of his school- 
house, shading his eyes with his hand. He looked down 
the road and up the road, but no one was in sight. 
Not a leaf moved that breathless July morning. It was 
yet too early for the scholars to come, and indeed being 
high haytime the dominie did not expect a large attend- 
ance. He was not watching the stray collie puppy 
which made noisy demonstrations against the blue- 
bottles near the water -spout at the foot of the play- 
ground. He was looking out for a tall girl carrying a 
black bag. To his mind she had delayed too long, and 
he was muttering what seemed by the gruff tones to be 
threats, but which was in reality something much milder. 

‘ Never was there sic a lassie ; she canna even come 
straight back from the heid o* the street ! ^ he said, 
complainingly. ‘ There’s no’ a dowg in the Dullarg but 
she maun clap, an’ no’ a pussy sleepin’ in the sun but 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


79 


she maun cross the road to stroke. She gets hersek fair 
covered wi’ dirt playin’ wi’ the laddies ; she’ll even set 
doon the black bag to play for keeps wi’ the boys at the 
bools — an’ her cornin’ on for fifteen.’ 

He sighed as though this were a deep grief to him, 
and a tear stood, with a kind of melancholy entirely 
unsuited to the slightness of the occasion, in his unsteady 
eye of watery blue. But it was not at all the short- 
comings of the ‘ lassie ’ that filled his heart. He kept 
muttering under his breath : 

‘ If my Flora had but had her ain — shame to you, 
Duncan Duncanson, shame to you, shame to you, she 
micht hae been a dochter o’ the manse.’ 

Suddenly there was a glint as of sunshine in a shady 
place among the trees at the foot of the inclined slope 
of beaten earth which was called the playground. So 
steep was it, that when a scholar fell anywhere upon it 
he rolled over and over till brought up by the dyke. 
A tall girl came up the steps with a hop, skip, and jump^ 
took the dominie round the neck in a discomposing 
manner, swung him on his heels as on a pivot, and 
pushed him into the school. 

‘ There,’ she said, ‘ that’s the last time that I gang for 
your bag. I wonder that you are not ashamed to sen’ 
your daughter to the public-hoose for a black bag that 
every bairn kens what’s in, every Tuesday and Friday, 
an’ you the maister ! ’ 

Duncan Duncanson stood knitting his broad smooth 
brow, and clasping and unclasping his hands nervously. 
But he said nothing. Flis attention was irresolutely 
divided between his daughter, who stood before him with 


So 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


arms akimbo, the image of a petty tyrant, and the black 
bag which more and more strongly drew his gaze. ' I’ll 
slip ower,’ he said, ‘ an’ see gin there’s a big eneuch coal 
on the fire to keep it in ! ’ So, taking the black bag in 
his hand, he went out like a chidden child glad to escape 
from observation. The girl maintained her dignified 
position till he was out of sight, then threw herself down 
on the hacked and ink-stained desk and cried as if her 
heart would break. 

‘ Oh, my faither, my faither,’ she sobbed, ‘ an’ him 
yince a minister.’ 

When the dominie returned, with a flush on his 
cheek which slowly ebbed away, he found his girl in the 
midst of a riotous game of ‘ steal the bonnets,’ which 
was only played at by the aristocrats of the school. 
Flora Duncanson was easily empress both in the school- 
house and in the school of the Nether Dullarg ; and 
except when her father took one of his occasional turns 
of wild and ungovernable temper after too close devotion 
to the black bag which he had returned from locking in 
its skeleton cupboard, she was also the mistress of the 
master. 

Every one in Nether Dullarg knew the history of 
Duncan Duncanson. He had taught nearly all the 
younger portion of them, for it was many years since he 
was appointed parish teacher in Nether Dullarg, long 
before Mr. Pitbye came to be minister. Duncan Duncan- 
son was college bred. More than that, he had been a 
minister, and no ‘stickit’ minister either, but duly 
licensed, ordained, and inducted — also, alas ! deposed. 
There had been a black bag even in those early days, 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 8i 

as Duncan Duncanson knew to his cost. His had been 
the good seed sown among the abundance of thorns. 
These two, thorns and wheat, grew up together into a 
deadly crop, and together were cut down in that terrible 
day of reckoning when the presbytery of Pitscottie 
solemnly deposed Duncan Duncanson, sometime minister 
of the parish of Shaws, from the office of the ministry 
of the Kirk of Scotland. 

Then the presbytery of that day adjourned to the 
Gordon Arms to wash down their presbyterial dinner 
with plentiful jorums of toddy, and Duncan Duncanson 
sat for the last time in his study in the manse of the 
Shaws, sipping and filling the demon bottle which he 
carried like a familiar spirit in his black bag. This was 
his Day of Judgment ; and the hopes of his youth, the 
aspirations of his middle life, the forecasts of a quiet age 
were all consumed in the flaming wrath of it. This was 
all because the Reverend Duncan Duncanson had fallen 
down one Sabbath day at the front door of the Shaws 
manse. There were those in the presbytery who had 
often fallen down at their back doors, but then this 
made a great difference, and they all prayed fervently 
for the great sinner and backslider who had slidden at 
his front door in the sight of men. The moderator, 
who in the presbytery had called Duncan everything 
that he could lay his tongue to, reflected as he drove 
home that he had let him off far too easily. Then he 
stooped down and felt in the box of his gig if the two- 
gallon ‘ greybeard ’ from the Gordon Arms were sitting 
safely on its own bottom. So much responsibility made 
him nervous on a rough road. 


82 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


Duncan Duncanson, no longer Reverend, at once re- 
turned to his native village and to the house of his father 
and mother, the daily cause and witness of their grey 
hairs whitening to the winter of the grave. They had 
a little house of their own, and it had not taken all their 
slender store to put their lad through college : for, save 
in the matter of the black bag and its inmate, Duncan 
Duncanson was neither spendthrift nor prodigal. Before 
he left the Shaws he was to have been married to the 
daughter of the neighbouring minister, but in the wild 
upheaval of that earthquake shock she obediently gave 
Duncan up as soon as the parish had given him up ; 
and in time married a wealthy farmer who did not come 
sober home from market for twenty years. 

In his own village Duncan was looked upon with an 
odd kind of respect. He was thought to have been led ‘ 
astray, though this was not the case — the devil, together 
with the weak chin and unstable eye, having been 
leading enough. He was looked on as ‘ byordnar* 
clever,’ ‘ a dungeon o’ learnin’.’ So, after some years, 
when the parochial school fell vacant, the minister who 
had baptized him, and who had helped him lamely with 
his rusty scraps of Latin and Greek (Latin as far as 
‘ Omnis Gallia ’ — Greek, the alphabet merely), put 
Duncan into the school, sure that he would teach the 
children well and conscientiously, and hopeful that he 
might ultimately be led to reform ; for ministers are 
sanguine men, at least all who do any good among 
other men. 

And the new schoolmaster had indeed done his 
duty, though with abundance of the rod and some 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 83 

detriment to his own temper and the cuticle of his 
pupils. But no such scholars went up from three 
counties as those who matriculated straight from the 
hedge school of the parish of Dullarg during the reign 
of the deposed minister of the Shaws. By and by 
Duncan picked up other little bits of patronage — the 
precentorship, as a matter of course, the inspectorship 
of poor, and ultimately the registrarship of births, deaths, 
and marriages. In the Dullarg it is a saying that we 
‘ keep oor ain fish guts for oor ain sea maws.’ This is 
not an expression common in the higher circles, but the 
thing itself is common enough there. Duncan married 
a village girl, who had made him a good wife during 
her short life, but had not been able to master the bottle 
imp. She had left him one daughter, our imperious 
beauty of the yellow locks. 

But we have gone afield from our school. The 
whole building, a long narrow barn, built of rough 
ashlar work with many small windows, never all whole 
at once, was sleepily droning with the morning lessons. 
Flora Duncanson, within a yard of her father, was 
making paper arrows to throw at Andrew Tait, the 
son of the wealthy farmer who had married Duncan 
Duncanson’s old sweetheart. Andrew was a long- 
limbed lad, known as ' the fathom o’ pump water.’ He 
was shy and thoughtful, prone to moon in corners, a lad 
in whom could be perceived no tincture of the bucolic 
clumsiness of the one parent or the faded and selfish 
gentility of the other. He liked to be teased by Flora 
Duncanson, for it gave him an opportunity of looking 
at her hair. He had never heard of Rossetti, but he 


G 


84 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


said in his heart, ‘ Her hair that lay along her back was 
yellow like ripe corn ! * 

The ex-minister sat at his high desk, and the hum 
of the school acted soothingly upon his unsteady nerves. 
A vision began to assert itself of something that he 
knew to be on one shelf of his private cupboard in the 
little dominie’s house adjoining the school. Without a 
word he rose and stepped out. Before he could get 
round the school. Flora was out and after him. There- 
upon the school resolved itself into a pandemonium, and 
Andrew the smith, shoeing his horses in the old ‘ smiddy * 
at the foot of the lane, said to his apprentice, ‘ The 
dominie’ll be oot to wat his thrapple. Oor Wull will 
be keepin’ the schule the noo ! ’ ‘Wull’ was a good- 
natured clever elder boy who was supposed to take 
charge of the school in the absence of the dominie. 
This he did usually by stopping the promiscuous 
fighting and scuffling which went on all round the school 
and organising a stated and official combat in the middle 
of the floor between a pair of well-matched urchins. 
‘ Let all things be done decently and in order ’ was 
Wull’s motto. 

In the height of the turmoil a great brown head 
presented itself at the door. It was the head of big 
red ‘ Trusty,’ the half-collie half-St.-Bernard which some- 
times accompanied Andrew Tait to the school, and 
played about outside till that youth got free of his 
bondage, when the pair went joyously homewards. 

No sooner was he spied than fifty voices invited him 
to enter. He came in, nothing loath, and crouched 
beneath the desk which stood against the wall by the 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


85 


window where sat his master with some bosom cronies. 
There he was lying concealed by a rampart of legs and 
slates when the master entered with an angry frown on 
his brow and his hat jammed over his forehead in a 
way that boded no good to the school. ‘ It's gaun to 
be a lickin' day/ said Andrew Tait, with an air of grim 
foreboding. All was quiet in a moment, for the fear of 
Duncan Duncanson with the black dog on his back was 
heavy on every young heart. Duncan was a good and 
a kindly man, and would go anywhere to help a neigh- 
bour in trouble, but he was undoubtedly savage in his 
cups. The imp of the black bag was in possession. 

The boys trembled, but the great red dog lay quiet 
as pussy with his im- 
mense faithful head 
pillowed on his master s 
knees. The dominie 
went to his desk, and 
as nothing seemed to 
come of his ill-humour 
the school gradually re- 
turned to its condition 
of lazy inattention. Fred 
Graham, the boy next to 
Andrew Tait, whispered, 

‘ Let me stroke the doggie’s heid.’ 

‘ What’ll ye gie’s ? ’ promptly replied Andrew, with 
the truly boyish commercial spirit. 

‘ A peerie,’ said his friend. 

‘ An' the string ? ’ added Andrew, who had a corner 
in dogs and could force the market. So for five 



86 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


minutes the big head was transferred to Fred Graham’s 
knee, and the stroking performed to the satisfaction of 
all parties. Then the next chance had been for some 
time disposed of to young Sanny M‘Quhirr of Drum- 
quhat, who being a farmer’s son never would have 
thought of stroking a dog save in school, for the laudable 
purpose of killing time and doing what was forbidden. 

School currency was changing hands and finding its 
way into Andrew Tait’s pockets at a great rate. The 
various claimants for next turn were so clamorous that 
they created some little disturbance, so that the master, 
seeing a cluster of heads together, noiselessly opened 
the lid of his desk and sent the ‘ taws ’ whirling down 
into their midst with hearty goodwill. They took Fred 
Graham round the neck, and he at once rose to receive 
his ‘ pawmies,’ the price of his general amusements. He 
had not been the guilty person, but he hardly denied it 
even pro formd^ so accustomed were they in that school 
to the Spartan code that the sin lay not in the action, 
but in the stupidity of being found out. 

Through the gap formed by the absence of Fred on 
his melancholy errand, a gap like that made by the 
drawing of a tooth, the master saw the orange skin and 
solemn eyes of ^ Trusty Tait,’ boys’ dog to the parish 
school of Nether Dullarg. 

His wrath turned instantly on Trusty and his owner, 
and his resentment burned with a sullen exaggerated 
fury. He imagined that the animal had been brought 
into the school in order directly to insult him. 

‘ Who brought that dog in here ? ’ he asked. 

^ Please, sir, he juist cam’,’ said Andrew Tait. 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


87 


‘ Put him out instantly ! ’ he commanded. 

‘ Please, sir, he’ll no’ gang.’ 

The dominie then went for the poker and approached 
the big dog, whose eyes began to shine with a yellow 
light curiously different from that which had been in 
them when the boys were stroking his shaggy coat. 
But he lay motionless as though cut in stone, nothing 
living about him except those slumberous eyes with the 
red spark flaming at the bottom of them. His great tail 
lay along the floor of the thickness of a boy’s arm, with 
which it was his wont to beat the boards as a thresher 
beats his sheaves at the approach of his master. ‘ Trusty ’ 
Tait’s dignity lay in his tail. His tenderest feelings had 
their abode there. By means of it he communicated 
his sentiments, belligerent or amicable. When his 
master appeared in the distance he wagged it ponder- 
ously, when a canine friend hove in sight it waved 
triumphantly, at the sight of a gipsy or a tramp it grew 
oratory with the expressiveness of its resentment. As 
the dominie approached with his weapon of warfare, 
Andrew Tait drew the iron shod of his clog, which he 
would have called his ‘ cakkar,’ across Trusty’s tail. 
The dog instantly half rose on his forepaws, showing 
a seam of teeth like a row of danger-signals, and gave 
vent to a thunderous subterranean growl, which so 
intimidated the masfer that he turned his anger on 
the victim who promised less resistance. He dragged 
Andrew Tait by the collar of his jacket into the middle 
of the floor, and, forgetting in his beclouded condition 
what he held in his hand, he struck him once across the 
head with the heavy iron poker, stretching him senseless 


88 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


on the ground. The whole school rose to its feet with 
a dull, confused moan of horror, but before any one could 
move Trusty had the dominie by the throat, threw 
him backwards over a form, and stood guard, growling 
with short blood-curdling snorts over the prostrate body 
of his young master. Through the open door Flora 
Duncanson came flying, for the noise had told her even 
in the cottage that something unusual was happening. 

‘ Go home at once ! ^ she called to the children, and 
though there were many there older than she, without a 
murmur they filed outside — remaining, however, in whis- 
pering awestruck groups at the foot of the playground. 

‘ Go home, father, this moment ! ' she said to her 
father, who had gathered himself together, and now 
stood shaking and uncertain like one awakened from a 
dream, groping stupidly with his hands. The old man 
turned and went heavily away at his daughter’s word. 
He even thought of asking her for the key of the cup- 
board, the strife for the possession of which had been 
the beginning of his black humour ; but a moment’s 
thought convinced him of the hopelessness of the request. 
‘ But I would be muckle the better o’t ! ’ he said, and 
sighed — perhaps for a moment conscious how much the 
worse he had been of it. 

Flora Duncanson stood over the senseless body of 
Andrew Tait. Trusty was licking the face. A thin 
streak of blood stole from under the hair and down the 
brow. The dog growled as the girl approached, but 
ultimately allowed her to come to the lad’s side. 

‘ Oh, Andra, Andra ! ’ she said, the salt water running 
silently down her cheeks. 


THE TRAGEDY OF DUNCAN DUNCANSON 


89 


The boy slowly opened his eyes, looked at the dog 
once more and then fixedly at Flora Duncanson. He 
always liked to look at her hair, but he had never noticed 
till now how beautiful her eyes were. He could not 
think what it was they reminded him of — something he 
had seen in a dream, he thought. 

‘ Dinna greet, Flora,^ he said, ‘ I’ll tell my faither that 
I fell, an’ I’ll lick ony boy in the schule that says I didna ! 
Oh, Flora, but yer e’en are terrible bonny ! ’ 

• • • • • • 

This is all a very old story in the Dullarg now, and 
Trusty is a Nestor among dogs. He spends all his fine 
afternoons on a broomy knowe by himself, for what with 
puppies and bairns the farm is not the quiet place that 
it used to be when he was young. Trusty overlooks a 
wide prospect were his faithful dim eyes able to see, 
but as it is he devotes himself chiefly to the flies which 
settle upon his nose. Over there on the slope glimmer 
in the haze the white stones in the churchyard. Trusty 
never was much of a scholar, in spite of so long fre- 
quenting the village academy, but had he been able to 
read he might have found this inscription on a granite 
tombstone down in the old kirkyard by the Dee water : — 

^acretJ to tlje ^emorp 

OF 

DUNCAN DUNCANSON, 

AGED 71 YEARS, SOMETIME 
MINISTER OF THE PARISH OF SHAWS, 

FOR THIRTY YEARS SCHOOLMASTER IN THIS PARISH, 

ERECTED BY HIS AFFECTIONATE CHILDREN, 

ANDREW AND FLORA TAIT. 

‘TO WHOM LITTLE IS FORGIVEN, THE SAME 
LOVETH LITTLE.’ 


WHY DAVID OLIPHANT REMAINED A 
PRESBYTERIAN 


‘ Now, Mr. OHphant, can you conceive any reason, 
except national prejudice, to which I am sure you are 
superior, why you should not be with us in the Church ? 
It is, as you know, quite time that you made up your 
mind. It is, indeed, solely with the hope of assisting 
you to a decision that I have desired to see you now.’ 

An urbanely dignified clergyman is speaking to a 
young man in an Oxford Common Room. 

‘ I am very sensible of your lordship’s condescension,’ 
replied David Oliphant, late scholar of St. Magnus, to 
the Right Reverend the Bishop of Alchester. 

That learned and liberal prelate was to preach before 
the University on the following day, and in the mean- 
time he was endeavouring to serve his Church by 
attracting to her bosom, that refuge at once so inclusive 
and so exclusive, another of those brilliant young 
Northmen who have given to St. Magnus its primacy 
among Oxford colleges, and from whose number the 
Anglican Church has obtained many of her finest 
scholars and her wisest prelates. 

The Bishop’s main question David Oliphant did not 
answer immediately, for many strange things were 


DAVID OLIPHANT 


91 


working within him. His certain desire was to do the 
work of the Christ. So much was clear to him — but 
how and where ? The answer was not so definite. His 
college friends were entering the Church by troops. 
They were as earnest and hopeful as he — they looked 
forward to beginning their work at once. They seemed 
beckoning him to come along with them into their 
mother-church, at whose door stood the amiable and 
comfortable Bishop of Alchester, with hands outstretched 
in welcome. And then before David Oliphant there 
rose up the vision of his own rugged Cameronian kirk 
— like Nature, a stern but not unkindly foster-mother. 
He thought of the four slow years of strictest theological 
training which awaited him if he returned to the North 
— four years for the scholar of St. Magnus equally with 
the rudest country lad who had stumbled through the 
requisite sessions in arts. Small wonder that he wavered, 
dividing the swift mind, or that the Bishop waited his 
decision with the smile of successful persuasion in his 
shrewd and kindly eyes. 

‘ We need such men as you, Mr. Oliphant,' he said ; 
‘ with your parts and — ah — your other advantages you 
may go very far.' 

They say that before the mind of the drowning, the 
past defiles in a panorama of inconceivable rapidity. 
David Oliphant had almost made up his mind to follow 
what seemed his manifest destiny, when certain visions 
of a time long past rose up before him, stood a moment 
clear, and then vanished, even before the grey eyes of 
his Grace of Alchester had lost their expectant smile. 
How swaftly they came and went it is hard to give an 


92 


DAVID OLIPHANT 


idea of. They take so long to tell, so unwillingly do 
words carry pictures. 

These are the things which came to David Oliphant, 
in clear and solemn vision, during the five minutes ere 
he answered the Bishop of Alchester. 

He saw an old grey-headed man, who worshipped, 
leaning upon the top of his staff, in a sheltered nook 
behind a low whitewashed Galloway farmhouse. He 
held his broad bonnet in his hands and the wind blew 
a stray lock over a brow like a weather-beaten cliff. 
His lips moved, but there was no sound. A little lad 
of five came pattering up the foot-worn path which led 
to the private oratory of the family high priest. He 
had asked hurriedly of the general public of the kitchen, 
‘ What gate did G’appa gae ? ’ but without waiting for 
the superfluous answer he trotted along that well-known 
path that ‘ G’appa ’ always ‘ gaed.’ The silent prayer 
ended, the pair took their way hand in hand to the 
heights of the crags, where, under its shallow covering 
of turf and heather, the grey teeth of the granite shone. 
As they sit they speak, each to the other, like men 
accustomed to high and serious discourse. 

‘ But why did the martyrs not go to the kirk the 
king wanted them to ? ’ the child asked. 

The old man rose, strong now on his feet, the fire in 
his eye, his natural force not abated. He pointed north 
to where on Auchenreoch Muir the slender shaft of the 
martyrs’ monument gleamed white among the darker 
heather — south to where on Kirkconnel hillside Grier 
of Lag found six living men and left six corpses — west 


DAVID OLIPHANT 


93 


toward Wigtown Bay, where the tide drowned two of the 
bravest of women, tied like dogs to a stake — east to the 
kirkyards of Balweary and Nether Dullarg, where under 
the trees the martyrs of Scotland lie thick as gowans 
on the lea. The fire of the Lord was in his eye. 

‘ Dinna forget, David Oliphant,^ he said, his voice 
high and solemn, as in a chant, ‘ that these all died for 
Christ's cause and covenant. They were murdered 
because they worshipped God according to their 
conscience. Remember, boy, till the day of your death, 
that among these men were your forebears, and forget 
not also who they were that slew them ! ' 

And after twenty years the late scholar of St. Magnus 
remembered. 

Again the young man saw a wide black night filled 
with the echoes of thundering and the rushing of rain. 
The same child stood in the open doorway, and, weeping, 
called pitifully for ‘ Grandfather.' There was no answer, 
but the whole firmament lightened with white flame from 
east to west ; and in that silent moment of infinite 
clearness he saw his grandfather's figure upright on the 
knoll before the house, the head thrown upwards towards 
that intense whiteness where the heavens seemed to open 
and the very face of God to look through. 

Once more he saw a Sabbath morning, still with 
the primeval stillness of ‘ a land where no man comes 
or hath come since the making of the world.' Peace 
all about the farm-steading, silence on all the fields, 
hardly a bleat from the lambs on the hill ; within, a 


94 


DAVID OLIPHANT 


cool and calm crispness as of home-spun linen kept in 
lavender. It was the silence which in an old Camer- 
onian household succeeded the ‘ taking of the Buik ’ on 
the morning of the day of the Lord. 

Suddenly at the outer door the old man appears, 
and he calls upstairs to his couple of manly sons — to 
him ever but lads to do his will — ‘ Boys, bring the 
‘‘ Queen’s Airms ” ^ up to the march dyke this minute ! ’ 
The men come downstairs, and, without any show of 
surprise, take down the old muskets off the wall, provide 
themselves with powder and shot, and follow their 
father along the wide stony sweep of the hill road. The 
little lad also follows, with a sense that the bottom has 
dropped out of his universe, when guns could be taken 
down on Sabbath morning. 

In the brisk morning sun a scattered group of men 
and dogs was drawing slowly through the great gaps in 
the pine woods towards the gate which was the entrance 
of the small rock-bound farm. At this gate the old 
man stands, his stalwart sons behind him, his broad 
blue bonnet in his hand. The hunters come coursing 
over the green. But ere any one can open the gate the 
old man steps forward, his white head bare to the sun. 
David Oliphant can see the white hairs glisten even now. 

‘ My lord,’ he says, ‘ forty year I have been on your 
land and your father’s land. It does not become me to 
tell you that you are breaking the law of God by 
hunting the beasts of the field on His day ; but, my 
lord, one thing you cannot do — you cannot break it on 
this land as long as I am upon it.’ 

^ ‘ Queen’s Airms,’ i.e, muskets of the reign of Queen Anne. 


DAVID OLIPHANT 


95 


The great laird came forward, young and passionate, 
a Rehoboam of many foolish counsellors. 

‘ What’s that he says, Daly ? That we can’t hunt 
on his farm ! I’ll teach the canting old hypocrite that 
every yard belongs to me. Open the gate, Daly ! ’ 

‘ My lord,’ said the old man, ‘ I am not careful to 
answer you concerning this matter, but I beseech you 
for your father’s memory not to do this thing.’ 

The young man wavered ; but a murmur arose from 
his companions. 

‘ Don’t let them spoil the sport with their canting 
and their blunderbusses. Stand out of the way^ 
Oliphant ! Down with the gates, Daly ! ’ 

But Daly was not destined to take the gates down, 
for once again the voice of the Cameronian elder rang 
out, steady and respectful as ever. 

' My lord, it is not my will to shed human blood, or 
to resist you by force, though I might well do it, but I 
solemnly warn you I will shoot every dog of yours that 
sets foot on my land this day. Boys, are you ready ? 
Stan’ forrit ! ’ 

The visions melted from before David Oliphant, and 
he saw only the patient Bishop waiting his answer, 
yawning a little because his dinner was deferred. But 
there was no uncertainty in the young man’s answer. 

‘ My lord,’ said he, with the steady voice and eye 
that had come to him from his grandfather, ' I thank 
you heartily for your good and kindly thought for me. 
Indeed, I am in no way deserving of your interest ; but, 
such as I am, I must cleave to my own church and my 
own people ! ’ 


THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES, 
MINISTERS IN THE PARISH OF COUTHY 

REPORTED VERBATIM FROM THE CONVERSATION OF 
WILLIAM M‘KIE, GRAVEDIGGER AND MINISTER’S 
MAN 

It was a still summer evening in the slack between hay 
and harvest on the farm of Drumquhat. The Galloway 
moors rose in long purple ridges to the west. The sun 
had set, and in the hollows pools of mist were gathering, 
islanded with clumps of willow. The ‘ maister ’ had 
made his nightly rounds, and was now meditatively 
taking his smoke, leaning on the gate at the head of 
the loaning, and looking over a green cornfield, through 
the raw colour of which the first yellow was beginning 
to glimmer. From the village half a mile away he 
could hear the clink of the smith’s anvil. There came 
into his mind a slow thought of the good crack going 
on there, and he erected himself as far as a habitual 
stoop would allow him, as if he proposed ‘ daunerin’ ’ 
over to the village to make one of the company in the 
heartsome ‘ smiddy.’ 

For a moment he stood undecided, and then deliber- 
ately resumed his former position with his elbows on 



THE PARISH OF COUTHY 
















THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES 


99 


the ‘ yett.’ Saunders MaWhurr had remembered his 
wife. To do him justice, it was seldom that he forgot 
her. But in his single perpendicular moment Saunders 
had been able to see over the stone dyke which hid from 
him the broken and deceptive path which led from the 
farm along the burnside and over the meadows to the 
village of Whunnyliggat. What he saw would have 
astonished a stranger, but it did not even induce Saunders 
to take a second look. A man was approaching up 
the loaning, apparently on all-fours. The farmer knew 
instinctively that the stranger was no stranger to him. 
He only saw William Kie, gravedigger and minister’s 
man, walking as he had walked any time these forty 
years. [William’s name was strictly, no doubt, M'Kie^ 
but the Mac was as hopelessly lost as the Books of 
Manetho.] He even remembered William when he 
was a dashing young hedger and ditcher with a red 
plush waistcoat for the lasses to look at on Sabbaths as 
they walked modestly from the churchyard gate to the 
door of Couthy Kirk. 

That was before William got his hurt by being thrown 
off a hearse in the famous south country snowstorm of 
the 1st of May. William Kie had never married. 
Why, you shall hear some day if you care, for once in 
a mellow mood William told me the story in his white- 
washed bachelor’s house, that stood with its gable end 
to the street, opposite the Free Kirk School. The 
bairns vexed his soul by playing ‘ Antony Over ^ against 
the end of his house, and running into his garden for 
the ball when, at every third throw, it went among the 
beadle’s kale. Had they been the pupils of the author- 
LofC n 


lOO 


THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES 


ised parochial dominie at the other end of the village, 
William might have borne it with some degree of equal 
mind ; but, as he said, a beadle for forty years in the 
Parish Kirk is bound to have his feelings about the Free 
Kirk. 

The farmer of Drumquhat did not turn round in 
reply to the greeting of the minister’s man. He, too, 
had his feelings, for he was a ‘ Free ’ and an elder. 

He said, ‘ Thank ye, Weelum, I canna compleen. 
Hoo’s yersel’ ? ’ 

‘ No’ that weel, Drumquhat ; things are awfu’ drug. 
I haena buried but yin since Martinmas — no’ a sowl 
for fower months, and the last but a tramp body 
that drooned himsel’ in the Dee — a three-fit grave that 
I made ower narrow an’ had to widen in the sweat o’ 
my broo — never a bawbee extra for’t frae the parish, but 
a grummle from that thrawn stick o’ a registrar ! ’ 

‘ Man alive ! ’ said Saunders MaWhurr, indifferently, 
his thoughts being arithmetically with his calves as he 
watched Jo, his farm boy, turn them out into the field. 
The gravedigger knew that the farmer’s attention was 
perfunctory, but he was not offended, for Saunders kept 
three pair of horse and a gig. Instinctively, however, 
he took up a subject that was bound to interest a Free 
Kirk elder. 

He said, ‘ Did ye hear what we got at the Hie Kirk 
yesterday? I daresay no’. Yer plooman was there, I 
ken, to see Jess Coupland ; but him — he disna ken a 
sermon frae an exposeetion, let alane bringing awa’ the 
fine points o’ sic a discoorse as we gat yesterday.’ 

‘ He was oot a’ nicht, an’ I havna seen him since he 


THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES 


lOI 


lowsed/ said Saunders, in his non-committal manner. 
‘ But what did ye get to mak’ ye craw sae croose ? 
No’ a new sermon, Fse warrant ! ’ 

‘ Weel, na, he didna exactly gang that length ; but, 
dod, it was better than that — it was a new yin d his 
granfaithed s ! Whaur he had fa’en on wi’t is mair than 
I can say, but the manse lass tells me that he was 
howkin’ up in the garret twa efternoons last week, an’ a 
bonny sicht he made o’ himsel’ ! ’ 

In a moment the farmer of Drumquhat was quite a 
different man ; he even offered William Kie a share 
of the gate to lean upon by silently stepping aside, 
which was a great deal for a man in his position. 
William acknowledged his kindness by silently seating 
himself on a broken gate-post lying at the dykeback. 
This was what is known in learned circles as a com- 
promise. 

The beadle took up his parable : * As sune as he 
steppit oot o’ the manse, I could see that there was 
something onusual in the wund. First, I thocht that 
it micht be clean bands that the mistress had gotten for 
him ; for Mistress Slee was in gey guid fettle last week, 
an’ I didna ken what she michtna hae dune ; but when 
I saw him tak’ oot o’ his case the same auld pair that 
he has worn since the Sacrament afore last — ye can 
juist tell them frae the colour o’ the goon — I kenned 
that it bood be something else that was makkin’ him 
sae brisk. Man, Saunders,’ said William, forgetting to 
say ‘ Drumquhat,’ as he had intended, which was counted 
more polite from a man like him, ‘ Man, Saunders, I 
dinna ken whaur my een could hae been, for I even gat 


102 


THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES 


a glisk o’* the sermon as it gaed intil the Buik, yet never 
for a minute did I jaloose what was cornin’.’ 

‘ Ay, man, Weelum, an’ what was’t ava ? ’ said 
Saunders, now thoroughly awake to a congenial topic. 
He was glad that he had not gone down to the ‘ smiddy ’ 
now, for Saunders was not in the habit of opening out 
there before so many. 

‘ Weel, Saunders, as I am tellin’ you, it was a new 
sermon o’ his granfaither’s, daecent man, him that lies 
aneath the big thruch stane in the wast corner o’ the 
kirkyaird. It’s maistly covered wi’ dockens an’ soorocks 
noo, for the Maister Slee that we hae the noo is mail* 
fameeliar wi’ his forebears’ han’ o’ write than wi’ the bit 
stanies that haud them daecently doon till Gawbriel’s 
trump bids them rise ! ’ 

‘ Haun’ o’ write ! ’ quoth Saunders ; ‘ what can the 
craitur mean ? ’ 

‘ Saunders MaWhurr,’ said the minister’s man, 
solemnly, ‘ therty year an’ mair hae I carried the Buik, 
an’ howkit the yaird, an’ dibbled the cabbage for the 
Maister Slees, faither an’ son. Ay, an’ I mind brawly 
o’ the granfaither — a graun’ figure o’ a man him, sax 
fit twa in his buckled shoon. Saunders, I’m no’ an 
upsettin’ man, an’ quate-spoken even on Setterday nicht, 
but ye wull aloo that I’m bun’ to ken something aboot 
the three Peter Slees, ministers o’ the parish o’ Couthy.’ 

‘ Gae on,’ said Saunders. 

‘ Weel, it’s no’ onkenned to you that the twa first 
Maister Slees wraite their sermons, for they were self- 
respecktin’ men, an’ nae ranters haiverin’ oot o’ their 
heids ! Na ’ 


THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES 103 

‘What aboot the granfaither, Weelum?^ put in 
Saunders, quickly, avoiding, in the interests of the 
history, contentious matter upon which at another time 
he would gladly have accepted gage of battle. 

‘ Weel, the granfaither was, as I hae said, a graun’, 
solit man, wi’ a reed face on him like the mune in hairst, 
an' sic a bonny heid o' hair it was hardly considered 
daecent in the parish o' Couthy. Fowk used to think 
he wore a wig till they saw him on horseback, for he 
wad ride wi' his hat in his haun' an' his hair blawin' oot 
in the wund like Absalom's. He was a rale fine moral 
preacher, reared in the hinder end o’ the last century, 
but neyther to baud nor to bind if onybody ca'ed 
him a Moderate. In deed an' truth, onybody that 
saw him wi' the laird when the twasome had been 
haein' denner thegither could see that was a lee an' 
a big yin ! ' 

‘ Juist that,' said the farmer of Drumquhat. 

‘ But when he preached on the Sabbath he gied the 
fowk no gospel to ca' gospel, but he did mak' them 
scunner with the Law ; an’ when he preached on Justice, 
Temperance, an' Judgment to come there wasna a shut 
e’e in a’ Couthy Kirk ! Fine I mind o' it, though I 
was but a callant, an' hoo I wussed that he wad hae 
dune an' let me hame to py owes o' poother for the 
fair on Monday. 

‘ The faither o' oor present Maister Slee ye’ll mind 
yersel’. He was a strong Non-Intrusion man afore the 
“ forty-three," as strong as it was in the craitur to be. 
A' fowk thocht that he wad hae corned oot wi’ the lave, 
an' sae I believe he wad but for the wife, wha lockit 


104 


THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES 


him in the garret for three days, an’ gied him his meals 
through the sky-licht ! 

‘ His sermons were like himsel’, like pease brose, 
made o’ half a pun o’ peas to the boilerfu’ o’ water — • 
rale evangelical, ye ken, but meat for babes, hardly for 
grown fowk. 

‘ I needna tell ye, eyther, aboot young Maister Slee ; 
weel, he’s no’ young noo ony mair than oorsel’s.’ 

‘ Humph ! ’ said Saunders. 

‘ He preaches aboot the lilies o’ the field, hoo bonny 
they are, an’ aboot the birds o’ the air, an’ the mowdies 
in the yird — the very craws he canna let alane. He 
said the ither Sabbath day that fowk that wraite guid 
resolutions in their note-buiks to keep out the de’il war 
like the farmer that shut the yetts o’ his cornfields to 
keep oot the craws ! ’ 

‘ That’s nane sae stupit ! ’ said Saunders. 

‘ Na ; he’s a graun’ naiteralist, the body,’ said the 
minister’s man, * an’ whan the big Enbra’ societies come 
doon here to glower an’ wunner at the bit whurls an’ 
holes in the rocks, he’s the verra man to tak’ them to 
the bit ; an’ whan the Crechton Asylum fowk cam’ doon 
to a picnic, as they ca’ed it, it was Maister Slee that 
gied them a lectur’ on the bonny heuchs o’ Couthy. 
An’ faith, I couldna tell ye what yin o’ the twa 
companies was the mair sensible. 

‘ Weel, to mak’ a lang story short, if I get a fair 
guid look at the paper when he pits it intil the Buik, I 
can tell by the yellaness o’t whether it’s his ain, or his 
faither’s, or his granfaither’s ; but I maistly forget to 
look, for he generally gies us them day aboot, beginnin’ 


THE THREE MAISTER PETER SLEES 


105 


on the sacrament wi’ his faither’s famous discoorse, “ As 
a nail in a sure place,” that we had every sax months, 
till the Glencairn joiner, a terrible outspoken body, telt 
him that that nail wadna hand in that hole ony langer ! 

‘ But when he begins to preach, we sune ken wha’s 
barrel he has been in, for if we hear o^ oor duty to the 
laird, an^ the State, an* them in authority ower us, we 
say, “ If the wast winda was open, an* the auld man 
wad cock his lug, he wad hear something that he wad 
ken.** On the ither haun*, if we hear aboot these present 
sad troubles, an* speeritual independence, an* Effectual 
Calling, we ken he*s been howkin* in the big beef-barrel 
whaur the Pre-Disruption sermons o* his daddy lie in 
pickle. 

‘ Sae yesterday he gied us a terrible startle wi* a 
new yin* o’ his granfaither’s that nae man leevin* had 
ever heard.* 

‘ An* what was his text ? ^ said practical Saunders. 

‘ *Deed, an’ I’m no* sae guid at mindin* texts as I 
yince was ; but the drift o* it was that we war to be 
thankfu’ for the recent maist remarkable preservation o* 
oor land in the great victory that the Duke o’ Wellington 
^ an* oor noble airmy had won ower the usurper Bonyparty 
on the plains o’ Waterloo ! ’ 

‘ That maun hae been a treat ! ’ said Saunders, 


THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEY 
OF EARLSWOOD 



HIS is no carried 
tale, but just as 
the minister 
himself told it 
to me. He was 
pleased like 
when he telled 
me, an’ I am 
giving you what 
is not to be told 
to everybody. 
Not that Allan 
Fairley need be 
ashamed, but proud the rather if every soul from here 
to Maidenkirk had the outs and the ins of the story at 
their fingers’ end. But I’m telling you that you may 
know the right way of the story, for there’s as many 
ways of it as bees in a byke. 

The way I came to hear it was this. Allan and the 
wife were at Drumquhat overnight on their marriage 


THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEV 


107 


jaunt, him being sib to my mistress, and prood of the 
connection as he has a right to be. My wife was a wee 
feared about having her in the house, being aware that 
she was a Gordon of Earlswood — the auldest stock in 
Galloway, and brought up to be a lady-body. But she 
need have had no fears, for ye never saw gentle or semple 
mair free or heartsome. She ran to the barn to help to 
gather the eggs, and got five, three being nest-eggs and 
a cheena one that was put there to deceive the chuckies. 
She kilted her coats and helped to feed the calves. 
Then she was for learning to milk, but Black Bet 
laid back her lugs, and in the hinderend kicked ower 
the luggie ; and there was never such laughing in 
Drumquhat since it was a farm-town. She made 
hersef as merry and heartsome as though there had 
never been a Gordon in Earlswood or a Douglas in 
the Isle. And Allan watched her as if he could not 
let her out of his sight — smiling like a man that dreams 
a pleasant dream but fears he will awaken. Then 
when her dancing een came across his steady, quiet 
look, she would come behind him and put her hands 
over his eyes, asking what she had done that he should 
look at her like that. 

‘You haven’t found out my last murder yet, Allan ! ^ 
she would say, and Allan would shift in his chair well 
pleased to watch her. It was gurly weather when they 
were at Drumquhat — 

‘ The wind made wave the red weed on the dyke, 

An’ gurl’ weather gruit beastes’ hair,’ 

quoted Allan, who has store of ballads, beyond what 


io8 


THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEY 


most ministers think it their duty to carry. When the 
wife was off with the candles and her hostess mysteries 
(mostly kindly fuss and a chance to gossip) to see 
Allan’s young guidwife to her chamber, Allan and me 
sat a gye while glowering at the red of the peat, till I 
broke the silence that had fallen between us — the silence 
of companionship, with the question that rose quite 
natural, for it was not yesterday or the day before that 
I first kenned the lad. ‘ Ay, Allan, lad, an’ where did ye 
fa’ on wi’ her ? ’ I could see the pride, good honest pride, 
rising in Allan’s face, flushing his cheek, and setting his 
eye fairly in a lowe, as he answered, ‘ Ay, Saunders, 
didna I do the best day’s work ever I did when I got 
her ? ’ This was my own thought for the lad, but I 
only said, ‘ An’ hoo did ye fa’ on wi’ her ? ’ 

‘ It’s a long story, Saunders, but I’ll tell you ’ — here 
he glanced at the clock, him that used to sit till the 
cocks were crawin’ a merry midnight — ‘ I’ll tell ye 
briefly,’ says he. The wives are not long in making 
us ‘ like the horse or mule, 

Whose mouth, lest they come near to him, 

A bridle must command.’ 

I quoted this once to my wife, who replied : ‘ Humph, 
an’ I never heard ye war the waur o’t — “ horse or 
mule ” ’ quo she, ‘ fegs, it’s anither quaderaped I was 
referrin’ to ! ’ But at this point I had business in the 
stable. 

‘ To begin at the beginning,’ said Allan. ‘ When 
I was elected to the parish of Earlswood I was the 
people’s candidate, ye maun ken. I had four hundred 


THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEY 


109 


votes to thirty-three ; but Walter Douglas Gordon of 
Earlswood, sole heritor of the parish, was against me. 
He proposed a far-out friend of his own, never dreaming 
but he would be elected without a word, and ye may 
guess what a back-set he got when only his foresters and 
them that was most behadden to him voted for his man.' 

‘ He wad neyther be to baud nor bin',' said I. 

‘ Na,' said Allan, ‘ and in open kirk meeting he cuist 
up to them that was proposin' me that my faither was 
but a plooman, and my mither knitted his hose. But he 
forgot that the days of patronage were by, for the Cross 
Roads joiner rises, and says he : “I ken Allan Fairley, 
and I ken his faither an' mither, an' they hae colleged 
their son as honestly on plooin' an' stockin'-knittin' as 
your son on a' the rents o' Earlswood ! " 

‘ “ He'll never be minister o' the parish of Earlswood 
wi' my guidwull ! " says he. 

‘ “ He'll e'en be minister o' Earlswood withoot it, 
then," said the joiner — an honest man, not troubled 
with respect of persons. “ There's nae richt o' pit an' 
gallows noo, laird ! " says he. 

‘ “ An' it's as well for you and your like ! " said the 
Laird of Earlswood, as he strode out of the kirk, grim 
as Archie Bell-the-Cat. 

‘ Weel, Saunders, I considered that four hundred 
was a good enough off-set against thirty-five of Earls- 
wood's foresters and cot-men, so I was settled in the 
parish, and took my mither from her knitting to keep 
the manse.' 

‘ Honour thy father and thy mother ! ' said I : ‘ you 
did well, Allan.' 


I lO 


THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEY 


‘ The folk at the big house left the kirk and drove 
over to the Episcopalians at Ford, but I went to call, as 
it was my duty to do. And I met a young lady in the 
grounds and asked her the way/ 

‘ I ken they are extensive,’ says I ; Mt was as weel 
to mak’ sure of your road ! 

‘Yes,’ said Allan, ignoring a slight significance of 
tone, ‘ I asked the way, and the young lady kindly 
walked with me to the door. This was the message 
that the footman brought back, the young lady standing 
by : “ Mr. Gordon declines to see you, and if you come 
on the policies again he will have you prosecuted for 
trespass.” ’ 

‘ Of course he couldna uphaud that,’ I put in. 

‘Very likely no’,’ said Allan, ‘but it was sore to 
bide from a poo’dered fitman on Earlswood doorstep 
under the blue een o’ Grace Gordon ! ’ 

‘ An’ what did she say ? ’ I asked, curious for once. 

‘ Say ! ’ said Allan, proudly ; ‘ this is what she did : 
“ Permit me to offer you an apology, Mr. Fairley,” she 
said, “ and to show you the private path through the 
fir plantation which you may not know.” Oh, I know 

it was maybe no’ ladylike, Saunders ’ 

‘ But it was awfu’ woman-\ik.Q ^ ! ’ said I. 

‘ I’ll no’ say anything about the walk through the 
plantation,’ said Allan Fairley, who no doubt had his 
own sacred spots like other folk, ‘ but I have no need 
to deny that a new thing came into my life that day 
when the rain-drops sparkled on the fir needles. I 
mind the damp smell o’ them to this day/ (And there 
is no doubt that the boy would to his dying day. I 









i’ll show you to the door ’ 





THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEY 113 

mind myser but there is no need going into 

that). 

‘ The time gaed on as it has the gait of doing/ 
Allan continued, ‘ and things settled a wee, and I 
thocht that they would maybe all come round — except 
Earlswood, of course. Ye maun ken that there's a big 
colony o’ dreadfu’ respectable gentry in oor pairish — 
retired tradesfolk frae Glasgow and Edinburgh, with a 
pickle siller and a back-load o’ pride.’ 

‘ I ken the clan ! ’ says I. 

‘ Weel, Saunders, ye’ll hardly believe what I’m 
gaun to tell you, but it’s no. made story I’m telling 
you. There was twa o’ them cam’ to the manse yae 
nicht/ said Allan, lapsing into his Doric, ‘ and the 
lass showed them intil the study. It was gye an’ dark, 
but they wadna hear o’ lichtin’ the lamp, an’ I didna 
wunner or a’ was dune. They didna seem to have 
come aboot onything in partiklar, but they couldna get 
awa’, so they sat and sat an’ just mishandled the rims o’ 
their hats. They lookit at yin anither an’ oot at the 
wunda an’ up at the ceilin’, but they never lookit at 
me. At last yin o’ them, a writer body, said in a kin’ 
o’ desperation, “ Mr. Fairley, we have been deputed to 
tell you what the better classes of the parish think 
would be the best for you to do ” 

‘ “ I am muckle obliged for the interest of the better 
classes of the parish in my affairs,” says I ; but he gaed 
on like a bairn that has his lesson perfect. 

' “ They think that it is a very noble thing of you to 
provide for your mother — filial piety and so on ” — here 
he was at a loss, so he waved his hands — “ but you 


THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEY 


1 14 

must be aware that — that I have a difficulty in 
expressing my meaning — that the ladies of the con- 
gregation, however willing, are as unable to call upon 
Mistress Fairley, as it would no doubt be embarrassing 
for her to receive them. Would it n(^ be better that 
some other arrangement — some smaller cottage could 
surely be taken 

* He got no further ; he wadna hae gotten as far if 
for a moment I had jaloosed his drift. I got on my 
feet. I could hardly keep my hands off them, minister 
as I was ; but I said : “ Gentlemen, you are aware of 
what you ask me to do. You ask me to turn out of 
my house the mither that bore me, the mither that 
learned me ‘ The Lord’s my Shepherd,’ the mither that 
wore her fingers near the bane that I might gang to 
the college, that selled her bit plcnishin’ that my manse 
micht be furnished ! Yc ask me to show her to the 
door — I’ll show you to the door ! ” an’ to the door 
they gaed ! ’ 

‘ \ycel dune ! That was my ain Allan ! ’ cried I. 

‘ The story was ower a’ the parish the next day, as ye 
may guess, an’ wha but Miss Gordon o’ Earlswood ca’ed 
on my mither the day efter that — an’ kissed her on the 
doorstep as she gaed away. The lawyer’s wife saw her. 

‘ There was a great gathering o’ the clans at 
Earlswood when it a’ cam’ oot, but Grace had the 
blood of Archibald the Grim as weel as her faither ; an’ 
she stood by the black armour of the Earlswood who 
died afe Flodden by the king, and said she afore them 
a’ : “I have heard what you say of Mr. Fairley, now 
you shall all hear what I say. I say that I love Allan 



I 


‘BY THE BLACK ARMOUR OF THE EARLSWOOD WHO DIED AT FLODDEN ’ 













THE COURTSHIP OF ALLAN FAIRLEY 117 

Fairley with all my heart, and if one of you says 
another word against him, I shall walk down to 
Earlswood manse and ask Allan Fairley if he will 
marry Grace Gordon as she stands ! ' 

‘ Saunders,* said my wife, entering as if she had not 
been having an hour long woman’s gossip with Grace 
Fairley, ‘ Saunders, there’ll be nae word o’ this when 
the clock strikes five the morrow’s morn. I wunner at 
you, Allan Fairley, a mairriet man, keepin’ him oot o’ 
his bed till this time o’ nicht wi’ yer clavers ! ’ 

The meeting here broke up in confusion. 



EARLSWOOD HOUSE 


THE REV. JOHN SMITH OF ARKLAND 
PREPARES HIS SERMON 


It is Friday, and the minister of Arkland was writing 
his sermon. Things had not gone well in Arkland 
that week. The meeting of the church court charged 
with the temporalities had not passed off well on 
Tuesday. One man especially had hurt the minister 
in a sensitive place. This was Peter M‘Robert, the 
shoemaker. The minister had represented that a bath 
in a manse was not a luxury but a necessity, when 
Peter M‘Robert said that as for him he had never ‘ had 
sic a thing in his life, an' as for the minister that auld 
Maister Drouthy had dune withoot yin in the manse 
for thirty-three year to the satisfaction o’ the pairish.’ 

Then there had been certain differences of opinion 
within the manse itself, and altogether the sermon had 
been begun with the intention of dressing down the 
offending parishioners. Nearly all sermons are personal 
to the preacher. They have been awakened within 
him by some circumstance which has come to his 
knowledge during the week. Preachers use this fact 
for good or evil according to their kind. 

A plain man was John Smith of Arkland — as plain 


JOHN SMITH OF ARKLAND 119 

and hodden grey as his name. He had succeeded to 
the church with the largest majority that had been 
known in the presbytery, for in that neighbourhood to 
have given a man a unanimous call would have been 
considered a disgrace and a reflection on the critical 
discrimination of the congregation. He had tried to 
do his duty without fear or favour, only asking that his 
hands should not be tied. He visited the sick with a 
plain quiet helpfulness which brought sympathy with 
it as surely as the minister entered the house. His 
sermons were not brilliant, but they were staves and 
crutches to many. 

Now as he sat at his manse window that bitter 
November morning he watched the rain volleying on 
the round causeway stones and the wide spaces of the 
village street dimly white with the dancing spray. The 
minister felt grimly in unison with the elements as he 
sat framing his opening sentences. He had chosen his 
text from a wonderful chapter. “ Wisdom is justified 
of her children.’ And in this wise he began to write : 
‘To be ignorant is to be dangerous. The ignorant 
man, though he be but one, can make of no account 
the wisdom of many men. After the wise of many 
generations have been striving to teach a people 
wisdom, a knave or a fool may come and cry aloud, 
“ There is no god but ourselves, there is no law but our 
own desires, there is no hereafter but the grave which 
we share with our sister the worm and our brother the 
dead dog!” Yet so great is the folly of man that 
such an one may draw away much people, after him 
into the wilderness of sin and self-indulgence. It is in 


120 


JOHN SMITH OF ARKLAND 


accordance with the nature of man that ignorance and 
narrowness should often succeed where wisdom is 
wholly rejected/ 

‘ That will do/ said the minister, looking over his 
work. He had Peter M‘Robert in his mind, and he 
rose and walked his study, ‘ mandating ’ his opening 
sentences with appropriate gestures, much to the 
astonishment of Marget Lowrie in the kitchen, who 
said, ‘ Save us ! what’s wrang wi’ the minister ? This 
is no’ Setturday ! ’ 

As he came in his sentry walks to the window which 
looked up the rain-swept street, he saw a dark-coloured 
oblong patch with a strange protuberance on the right 
side, hirpling like a decrepit beetle athwart the road, 
till, being caught at the manse corner by a bitter swirl, 
this irregular shape — 

‘ If shape it could be called, that shape had none,* 

stumbled and fell within thirty yards of the study 
window, discharging on the muddy road an avalanche 
of shavings, small branches, knobs, angles, and squares 
of wood. In a moment the minister was out at the 
door and was helping old Nance Kissock to her feet, 
and then under the eyes of all the wives in the village 
assisting her to collect again her bagful of chips and 
kindlings which the good-natured joiner allowed her to 
take once a week from his floor. 

‘ I hope you are none the worse, Nance?’ said the 
minister. 

* I thank ye, Maister Smith ; Tm sair forfoughten 
wi’ the wun’, but gin the Almichty be willing I’ll be at 


JOHN SMITH OF ARKLAND 


I2I 


the kirk on Sabbath to hear ye. It's guid to think on 
a' the week what ye tell us. Whiles it gars me forget 
the verra rheumatics ! ' 

When the minister got back into the friendly shelter 
of his study he took up the sheet which he had laid 
down in order to rush out to Nance Kissock’s assist- 
ance. He read it over, but when he took his pen again, 
he did not seem to like it so well. If Nance were 
speaking the truth, and she fed during the week on the 
spiritual food which she received in his kirk on the 
Sabbath, he could not conceal from himself that next 
week she had a good chance of going hungry. Yet he 
could not allow Peter M‘Robert to get off without a 
word, so he put the thought away from him and went 
on with his task. ‘ How often does a man of limited 
view mistake his own limitations for the possibilities ol 
others. He never judges himself — he could not if he 
would — and naturally when he judges others it is only 
to condemn them.' A gust more than ordinarily 
powerful took the minister again to the window, and 
he saw John Scott, the herd from the Dornel, wringing 
the wet from his plaid. He knew that he had come 
down to the village from the hills three miles out of 
his road to get his wife’s medicine. Presently he would 
trudge away manfully back again to the cot-house on 
the edge of the heather. Now the minister knew that 
come storm or calm John Scott would be at the kirk on 
the next day but one, and that he would carry away in 
the cool quiet brain that lay behind the broad brow the 
heads and particulars of the sermon he heard. As he 
went steadily knitting his stocking, conquering the 


122 


JOHN SMITH OF ARKLAND 


heather with strides long and high, visiting his black- 
faced flock, he would go revolving the message that his 
minister had given him in the house of God. 

‘ Wisdom is justified of her children,’ repeated the 
minister, doggedly ; but his text now awakened no 
fervour. There was no enthusiasm in it. He thought 
that he would go out and let the November winds drive 
the rain into his face for a tonic. So he slipped on his 
Inverness and let himself out. His feet carried him 
towards the garret of one of his best friends, where an 
aged woman, blind and infirm, was spending the latter 
end of her days. She could not now come to church, 
therefore the minister went often to her — for it was 
sunshine to him also to bring light into that very dark 
place where the aged servant of God waited her end. 

Mary Garment knew his step far down the stair, and 
she said to herself : ‘ It is himseh ! ’ and deep within her 
she gave thanks. ‘It is a great thing to hae the bread 
o’ life broken to us so simply that we a’ understan’ it, 
Maister Smith,’ she said. 

‘ But, Mary, how long is it since you heard a sermon 
of mine ? ’ 

‘ It’s true it’s a lang time since I heard ye preach, 
minister, but I hear o’ yer sermons every Sabbath. Yin 
and anither tells me pairt o’t till I get as muckle as I 
can think on.’ 

As the minister said good-bye to Mary Garment, she 
said: ‘Ye’ll hae ower muckle to think on to mind me 
on the Lord’s day when ye’re speakin’ for yer Maister ; 
but I hae nane but you to mind, sir, so I’ll be prayin’ 
for you a’ the time that ye’re uphaudin’ His name.’ 


JOHN SMITH OF ARKLAND 


123 


‘ Thank you, Mary, I’ll not forget ! ’ said her minister. 

And he went out much strengthened. 

As he went mansewards he passed the little cobbler’s 
den where Peter M‘Robert was tap-tapping all the day, 
and the sound of Peter’s terrible cough called to him 
with a voice that claimed him. He stepped in, and 
after the word of salutation, he asked his office-bearer : 

‘ Are you not thinking of getting that cough attended 
to, Peter ? ’ he said. 

‘ Wha — me? Na, no’ me; hoots, it’s but a bit 
host, nocht to speak aboot, thank ye for speerin’, Maister 
Smith.’ 

Just then the minister saw the doctor walking 
rapidly up the far side of the street, calm-faced and 
dignified, as if this howling November north-easter were 
a beautiful June morning. Him he summoned. 

‘ Here’s Peter’ll no’ speak to you about his cough. 
He must have some of your drugs, doctor.’ 

The doctor called the unwilling cobbler from his last, 
and after a brief examination he said : 

‘ No, I don’t think there will be any need for drugs, 
Mr. Smith ; if you, Peter, will use a gargle to get rid of 
a trifling local inflammation. Less lapstone dust and less 
snuff, Peter, and warm water three times a day,’ said the 
doctor, succinctly, and proceeded on his rounds. 

As the minister went out, Peter looked up with a 
queer twinkle in his eye. 

‘ Maister Smith,’ he said, * gin water be sae needful 
for the inside o’ a cobbler’s thrapple, maybe I was 
wrang in thinkin’ that it wasna as necessary for the 
ootside o’ a minister ! ’ 


124 


JOHN SMITH OF ARKLAND 


‘ Then we’ll say no more about it, Peter,’ said the 
minister, smiling, as he closed the door. ‘ Mind your 
gargle ! ’ 

When the minister got to his study, he never stopped 
even to wipe his feet, and when the mistress followed 
to remonstrate, she found him putting his sermon in 
the fire. 

The minister’s text on the following Sabbath morning 
was an old one, but it was no old sermon that the 
Arkland folk got that day. The text was, ‘ Come unto 
me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden ; and I will 
give you rest.’ 

Nance Kissock was there, and did not go home 
hungry ; John Scott had come down from the muirs, 
and had something better than physic to take back to 
his ailing wife ; Peter M‘Robert sat in his corner looking 
cleaner than he had done within the memory of man — 
also he never coughed once ; no less than eight different 
folk came in to tell blind Mary Garment about the 
sermon. 

But none but the minister knew who it was that had 
been praying for him. 



NETHER DULLARG 

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF REV. JAMES PITBYE, 
MINISTER OF NETHER DULLARG 

There is no doubt that we in this part of the world 
have the wale of ministers. And this is what nobody 
but John Tamson of the Risk thinks of denying; but 
then John was never a weel-spoken body, and indeed 
had some bit thought of trouble with the session in his 
young days long before he was an elder himseb. So 
nobody heeds much what he says. 

John was over at Drumquhat the other night, and 
after him and me had settled our matters, he was telling 
me about the minister that they had got now in the 
parish of Nether Dullarg. 


126 


THE MINISTER OF NETHER DULLARG 


‘ Ay/ says he, ‘ he’s a rale quaite chiel, oor minister 
— faut ? Na. I hae no faut to find wi* him. Na, he’s 
raleceevil.’ 

‘ I’m glad ye like your minister, for there’s no^ that 
mony pleases you, John ! ’ said I, to give him an opening, 
for I had heard that he was waur ta’en with this minister 
than with all the rest. 

‘You’ll see a heap of him, having him, so to speak, 
just over the dyke ? ’ said my mistress. 

‘ Ow ay, he’s no’ that ill to see,’ he said, very slow- 
like, for I could see that he was fair girnin’ with what 
the clerk of our School Board calls ‘ an ironical mainner 
o’ speech.’ This is a thing no’ much affected in our 
countryside, except by John Tamson himsel’ and a 
road-man they call ‘ Snash ’ Magill. Snash, when the 
School Board had him up before them for not sending 
his bairns to the new school at Dyke End, had the 
assurance to ask the chairman if his father would ever 
have been out of gaol if there had been a School Board 
in his young days. But the Board was very sore on 
him for this, because they mostly all were much 
obligated to the chairman or were nearly related to 
them that were. 

John Tamson is no’ a man that I would be fond of 
having for next neighbour myself, but he’s very enter- 
taining when he comes over for a forenicht. He likes 
to sit in the kitchen, so when he is at Drumquhat the 
men are very exact about ‘ lowsin’-time,’ and I take a 
bit turn round the yard myself, just to see that they 
dinna skimp the stabling of the horses in their hurry to 
get in to their supper, being well aware that John will 


THE MINISTER OF NETHER DULLARG 


127 


be in full blast, and anxious to miss as little as 
possible. 

‘ We fand faut wi’ oor last twa ministers for no’ 
stoppin’ lang wi’ us,’ said John, when we were all quiet, 
for John cannot do with folk Miotchin’ an’ fidgin’.’ If 
he had been a minister, as at one time he thought of 
being before his trouble, he would have taken a drink 
and unfolded his white napkin when the late folk are 
coming up the aisle, as our Mr. Fairley does whiles to 
encourage them to be in time next Sabbath. ^ Ay, 
fowk were no’ pleased wi’ them for shiftin’ so quick, but 
that’s no’ a faut that they’ll hae to fin’ wi’ Maister 
Pitbye, or I’m sair mista’en, for I’m thinkin’ that the 
Dullarg folk’ll get him to bury ! ’ 

Here my wife put in her word as she stood at the 
bake-board — the wife whiles allows that she is scan- 
dalised with John’s wild talk, but she finds a great deal 
of work in the kitchen when he is here for all that. 
She ^ likes to hear the body’s din,’ as she once said 
when I tried her with a chapter or two of Tammas 
Carlyle when I was reading in the winter forenichts 
about the Heroes. ‘ It’s better than sittin’ clockin’ an’ 
readin’ — a body micht as weel no’ hae a man ava. 
Though I cannot mak’ oot what the craitur wad be at, 
I like to hear the body’s din ! ’ My wife’s a good wife, 
but her tongue wad clip cloots, or, as the clerk o’ the 
School Board would say, she has ‘ a facility in express- 
ing her meaning.’ 

‘ I hear that he’s a very quaite man,’ said Mistress 
M‘Quhirr, ‘ but somebody was tollin’ me that he was no’ 
considered a great veesitor.’ 


128 


THE MINISTER OF NETHER DULLARG 


‘Veesitor, quo’ she!’ says John, with his birses up 
in a moment, ‘ hoo div ye think that the man has time 
to veesit, considerin’ the wark that he pits through han’ 
in a day ! I wonder to hear ye. Mistress MaWhurr 1 ’ 

The herd-boy got up off the settle, for it was 
interesting to hear John Tamson uphaudin’ the 
ministers — him bein’ weel kenned for an Auld Kirk 
elder and nae great professor. 

‘ If I dinna ken what that man does in the day, 
there’s naebody kens,’ said John, raxing for a peat to 
light his pipe. ‘ Noo, I’ll juist gie ye an idea — last 
Friday I was aboot the hoose a’ day, aff an’ on, wi’ a 
meer that was near the foalin’. 

‘ At nine by the clock his bedroom blind gaed up, 
an’ he cam’ doon the stair maybe a quarter o’ an ’oor 
after or thereby. The mistress had been up an’ aboot 
frae seven, an’ had the bairns a’ washt an’ dresst, an’ 
oot at the back so as no’ to wakken their faither, or 
disturb him in his thinkin’. Weel, doon he comes an’ 
gets his breakfast, for I saw Betty takkin’ in the cream 
frae the larder at the end o’ the hoose. She skimmed 
it aff the bairns’ milk for their parritch, an’ set it there 
foT the minister himsel’, it being weel kenned through 
a’ Gallawa’ that cream is needed for the brain wark. 
Then there’s a bell rings for prayers, an’ Betty synes 
hersel’ an’ gangs ben, an’ their mither shoos the bairns 
out o’ the sand-hole, an’ gies them a dicht to mak’ them 
faceable to gang in. Then in ten minutes they’re a’ 
oot again, an’ here comes himsel’ for a rest an’ a smoke, 
and to look oot for the post. Maybes in half an ’oor 
the post comes in sicht, wi’ his troosers buckled up, for 


THE MINISTER OF NETHER DULLARG 


129 


he’s an onmarried man an’ thinks a dale o’ his reed 
braid. The minister has never moved, smokin’ an’ 
thinkin’, nae doot, o’ the Sabbath’s sermon. The post 
gies him twa-three papers an’ letters, an’ then yesterday’s 
Scotsman that he tak’s alang wi’ Maister MacPhun doon 
at the Cross Roads. The post’s auntie cleans Maister 
MacPhun’s kirk, so the post tak’s the paper up to the 
Dullarg for naething. They’re juist from the Church 
Offices, take them on to the Manse, an’ gie me the 
paper,” he says. Syne he sits doon, decent man, as he 
had a good richt to do, on the green seat at the end o’ 
the hoose, an’ wi’ great an’ surprisin’ diligence he reads 
the Scotsman till maybe half-past twal. But he has had 
cracks forbye in the byegaun, wi’ a farmer that had been 
at the smiddy, wi’ John Grier the tea-man, wha is an 
elder o’ his an’ never centres him in the session, an’ 
forbye has sent twa tramps doon the road wi’ a flea i’ 
their lug. Pm thinkin’. Then he lays the paper doon 
on’s knee an’ ye wad think that his studies war’ makkin’ 
him sleepy ; but little do ye ken him if ye think sae — 
for roon the hoose efter a yella butterflee comes his boy 
Jeems, wha disna promise to be the quaite ceevil man 
his father is. He stops the callant aboot the quickest, 
an’ sen’s him in to his mither to bring oot word when 
the denner will be ready. Maister Pitbye says nocht 
when the answer comes, but he tak’s up Thursday’s 
paper again, an’ has a look at the adverteesements an’ 
the births, daiths, an’ mairriages. Then he cleans his 
pipe, for he’s a carefu’ man, an’ in some things baith 
eident and forehanded. 

‘ Then efter denner is by he has another smoke, as 


130 THE MINISTER OF NETHER DULLARG 

every man should that has a respec' for his inside. 
Then he fills again an’ gangs inbye to his study, where 
the blind is drawn doon, for ower muckle licht is no 
guid for the sermon-makkin’. For twa ’oors he works 
hard there, an’ disna like to be disturbit nayther, for 
yince afore we fell oot, when I gaed to see him about 
some sma’ maitter, the lass pit me in raither sharp, an’ 
the sofa gied an awfu’ girg^ an’ there sat the minister 
on’s ain study chair, blinkin’ an’ no weel pleased, juist 
like a hoolet, at bein’ disturbit at the studyin’. 

‘ There’s nae mainner o’ doot that it’s then that the 
sermons are made, for a’ the rest o’s time I can accoont 
for. Then when tea is bye, oot comes the minister wi’ 
his pipe, an’ sets his elbaws on the dyke, an’ does some 
mair o’ the thinkin’. Then he pits on his third best 
hat an’ awa’ he sets doon the brae to the shop, an’ 
there, as oor lass Peg telled me, him an’ John Aitken 
ca’ed the crack for the best pairt o’ an ’oor. Then he 
gangs his wa’s in, as he does every nicht, to see the 
Clerk o’ oor Schule Board, wha ance at an election time 
made a temperance speech in the next coonty, but wha’s 
ower weel kenned a man to do the like at hame. It 
was chappin’ nine by the clock when the minister cam’ 
hame to his supper, to tak’ the Book, an’ decently to 
gang to his bed, nae doot wi’ the approval o’ his con 
science that he had dune a good day’s wark.’ 

‘ An’ it’s time that we were a’ in oor beds ! ’ said 
my wife. 



THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


There was a silence in all the chambers of the manse 
of Glen Kells. A wet and dreary wind wailed about it 
and shook the rain-drops off the Scotch firs that 
sheltered it. Hushed footsteps moved to and fro in the 
kitchen, with occasional pauses, as if conscious of their 
own inappropriateness. There was the dank trail of 
many wheels on the narrow gravelled walk before the 
porch. The rain stood in them as in the dismalest of 
canals. It was the day after the minister’s funeral. 

In an upper room two women sat looking out at 
the rain. The younger held the hand of the elder ; but 
in this room also there was silence. They were silent, 
for they had seen their old life crumble like a swallow’s 
nest in the rain, and they had not yet seen the possibility 
of any new life rise before them. So they sat and 

K 


IN THE GLEN KELLS 


132 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


looked at the rain, and it seemed that there was nothing 
for them to do but to go forward for ever and ever — 
the rain beating about them, their feet 

‘ Deep down in a drift of dead leaves.* 


There was a ‘ short leet ’ — mystic words, not under- 
standed of the Southron — in the Glen of the Kells. 
The ‘short leet V did not come all at once — this had 
been too much happiness, tending to make kirk 
‘ members and adherents * lose distinction in their joys. 
But they came — there were just three of them, the leet 
being the shortest of leets — each for a Sabbath into the 
glen, preaching at noon in the kirk, and in the evening 
in the school-house of the clachan. Yet all but one 
went away feeling that, whoever was the man, it could 
not possibly be he, for the congregation of the hill-folk 
at each diet of worship sat silent and expressionless, 
while fiery denunciation and thunderous exhortation 
passed them over sitting there equal -minded and 
unscathed. The first who preached was the Rev. James 
Augustus Towers, assistant in St. Mungo’s in Edinburgh, 
no less. He had been pitched upon as the likely man 
as soon as the list had been made up by the ‘ c6-mi-tee ’ 
— the assembly of office-bearers and honourable men 
not a few of the parish of Glen Kells. The Rev. 
James Augustus Towers was a distinguished assistant. 
He had been brought out, a very callow fledgling, under 
the aristocratic wing of the great Dr. Baton, the 
Distinguished Critic and Superior Person of the whole 
church. There he learned that Presbyterianism had no 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


133 


claims on any man’s admiration — that Presbytery was 
singularly unbeautiful — that the Beautiful alone was the 
Good — that a Creed was a most inconvenient incum- 
brance — that enthusiasm made a man hot and ridicu- 
lous, whilst the cultured calms and ordered forms of the 
Anglican church, as understood by her higher clergy, 
were the only things really worthy of admiration, 
though even these must be carefully denuded of all 
meaning. Such was the equipment wherewith the Rev. 
James Augustus Towers undertook to become a 
candidate for the suffrages of the herds and farmers of 
Glen Kells. He brought his own gown and cassock 
from Edinburgh, and had a coloured cloth hanging over 
his back when he preached in the kirk in the morning. 
The sermon was lost to the Glen of the Kells, for 
nobody ever heard a word of it, so intent were their 
eyes on this new thing, unknown and unimagined, 
that had come into their midst. The ‘ Frees ’ said it was 
‘a rag of Rome,’ while the U.P.s up at St. John’s Town 
said that it was ‘ nocht less than the mark of the beast.’ 
But ‘ Clicky ’ Steward, the grieve at Craigencaillie, who 
had never attended church with any regularity before, 
and who meant to vote as an adherent, said, with a 
strong expression which those who know him will 
recognise, ‘ Say as ye like, the lad wi’ the tippet’s the boy 
for me ! ’ And there were not a few of ‘ dicky’s ’ mind. 

All the candidates stayed at the manse, past which 
the Kells water was slipping gently as of old. The late 
minister’s widow was still in possession, and it was ex- 
pected by the not unkindly folk that she would not have 
to flit till May — ‘ she wad get time to look aboot her.’ 


134 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


Gavin Ross had died a poor man, but he had not for- 
gotten to make what provision he could for his wife and 
daughter. Indeed, there had no day dawned and no 
night fallen since ever he married when he did not bear 
this within him next the very skin of his naked soul. 
The mother and daughter had looked over the possibi- 
lities — to go to Edinburgh, and there to take the better 
kind of house and try the old sad plan of keeping 
lodgers, which none who undertake have their trials to 
seek ; to settle in Cairn Edward and open a little school, 
where no doubt Margaret could get a few pupils in 
music and French. But in the heart of Margaret Ross 
there often came a thought which never visited that of 
her mother, that the best of these prospects was miser- 
ably inadequate to the supply of her mother’s needs on 
anything like the scale to which she was accustomed. 
She felt that it lay on her to keep her mother, whose 
heart had never recovered from the shock of her hus- 
band’s death — all whose sorrow was now bound up in 
the thought that before long she must leave the manse 
to which she had come as a bride on Gavin Ross’s arm 
so many years ago. 

Into this home of silence came the Rev. James 
Augustus Towers, and his attitude was as condescend- 
ing and superior as though he were already master of 
the manse, and the pale women-folk but lodgers on 
sufferance. He made himself at home — in carpet 
slippers, for it was only in the pulpit that he covered 
himself with the vain gauds of adornment. As soon 
as he came to a dining-table, or into a drawing-room — 
then, ah ! then, in spite of the veneer of culture, it was 







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THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


137 


in the power of the most casual observer ‘to trace, 
with half an eye, 

^ The still triumphant carrot through ! ’ 

The Rev. James Augustus Towers, assistant in the 
kirk of St. Mungo, sat at the fire in the manse dining- 



THE SLIPPERS OF AUGUSTUS TOWERS 


room while Margaret Ross helped Janet to take the 
things to the kitchen after dinner. He kept his back 
steadily to them, being content with himself and secure 
of his chances. Then he lay at length in an easy-chair 
and picked his teeth, while the carpet slippers sunned 
themselves on Gavin Ross’s fender. 

It was the night when the Third Candidate was 


138 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


expected at the manse of Kells. He had never been 
there before, but a friend of the banker who was 
convener of committee had heard the lad preach in a 
neighbouring parish, and that very powerful man had 
exerted his influence — no light thing in a community 
of small farmers — to have Christopher Murray put on 
the list, and afterwards drafted into the mystic trio of 
the short leet. The Second Candidate had come and 
gone, without leaving any impression ; ‘ his name was 
indeed writ in water.' Had he known it, he owed this 
to the banker. He was the son of the prominent 
ecclesiast who was prime minister of the local Presby- 
tery — ‘ could twist them roon' his wee finger,' it was 
said. Now the banker had no idea of committing the 
affairs of the parish to this prominent father in the 
church 

‘ Of large discourse and excellent taste in wines.’ 

He had received a letter from the wife of this 
gentleman, who was a distant kin of his own, an 
epistle evidently inspired by a hand heavily clerkly 
and presbyterial, recounting the marvels of her son's 
academic career, and all his later fitness for the position 
of minister of the parish of Glen Kells. This was 
hardly fair to the youth, who, in spite of his training, 
was a really modest lad. But the banker, a man wise 
in counsel as kindly in heart, smiled as he wrote him 
down on his official list, under the column devoted 
to testimonials — By whom recom7nended, ‘ The Rev. 
Roderick Rorison, recommended by his mother.' And 
the smile was as wide and as long as the Glen Kells 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


139 


in twenty-four hours after the next committee meeting, 
while the young man’s chances had utterly vanished 
away. 

At the Bank as well as in the Manse there was 
expectancy going out towards the gig of the farmer of 
Drumrash, in which the last man on the short leet was 
to make his way up the Glen of the Kells Water. On 
its jigging and swaying eminence the other two had 
likewise made their exits and their entrances. For Glen 
Kells believed in giving every man an equal chance — 
except the banker, who smiled to himself as he thought 
of the Rev. Peter Rorison, folding his comfortable hands 
and looking across to his wife as if between them they 
had already annexed the Glen of the Kells to their 
diocese. But the banker was far from comfortable ; 
for, though he wished the Rev. Christopher Murray 
well, he knew that if he failed to please, the only 
alternative was the Rev. James Augustus Towers — and 
the banker did not admire the ‘ tippet.’ 

When Christopher Murray topped the brae at the 
head of which the manse stood, he was thinking of 
nothing higher than the prospect of a cup of tea and a 
quiet fire by which to spend the evening and read the 
book which he had brought with him in his black bag. 
He pulled at the manse bell, and somewhere far down 
the stone passages he heard it ring. It had a fixed 
and settled sound, quite different from the deafening 
clangour of the town house bells, where, when you pull 
an innocent-looking knob in a lintel, you seem to set 
in motion a complete church peal immediately on the 
other side of the door, Christopher Murray was ready 


140 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


to tell. the maid whom he expected to open the door 
that he was the minister come to supply on the next 



‘IN THE DARK OF THE DOORWAY’ 


day. He was prepared for that look of compassion for 
his youth which he knew so well, which said as plain as 
words could say, ‘ Puir lad, little do ye ken whaPs 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 141 

afore ye in this pairish ! * But he was not prepared for 
what he did see. A slender girl in black, fair as a lily, 
stood in the dark of the doorway, waiting for him to 
speak. Speak he did, but what he said he could never 
remember ; for he found himself, with his hat in his 
hand, endeavouring to apologise for some offence which, 
though quite clear to himself, he was strangely unable 
to express in words. He felt himself uncouth, ungainly, 
coltish, generally ‘ in the road,’ but he never got any 
great length with putting it into words ; for in an 
incredibly short time he found himself mysteriously at 
home in the manse parlour, an apartment unpenetrated 
by the assurance of the Rev. James Augustus Towers, or 
the illustrious ancestry of the Rev. Roderick Rorison ; 
where, at the head of her mother’s invalid sofa, his eyes 
could watch the busy fingers and flower-like face of 
Margaret Ross, pathetic in her black dress. Christopher 
Murray was an orphan, and had little knowledge of the 
life of the home, but he says now that his aspirations for 
a home of his own dated from this time. It is safest 
to believe a man when he tells you little coincidences of 
this kind. Very likely he believes them himself. 

The fateful morrow came, and the last man on the 
leet proved himself no bungler. He preached straight 
from the shoulder. There were more there at night 
than had been in the forenoon, a thing that had not 
been known in the Glen Kells in the memory of man. 
This is what old Betty Grierson said ; she was a great 
critic of sermons, and they say that even Mr. Rorison 
was feared for her : ‘ ’Deed, sirs, I howp the fear o’ God 
has been gien to that young man, for of a truth the 


142 


THE GLEN KELLS SHORT LEET 


fear o* man has been withhauden from him/ which was 
better than twenty testimonials in the parish. The 
banker smiled, for he knew that the ‘ tippet * had now 
small chance of being aired a second time in the kirk 
of the Glen Kells. 

So Christopher Murray is now placed minister in 
the Glen of the Kells, and has a good prospect of a 
home of his own. But Mrs. Ross and her daughter 
Margaret are still in the manse, and the young 
minister is lodging for a time over the shop in the 
village. The Rosses have given up the little house 
they had taken in Cairn Edward, and Christopher 
Murray smiles like a man well pleased when the people 
ask him when he is going into the manse. He does 
not think that Mrs. Ross will be troubled to move out 
of the old manse overhanging the Kells Water in which 
she has lived so long, and he has the best of reasons 
for his belief. 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 



VERY one said that 
it was a pity of 
Boanerges Simp- 
son, the minister 
of £t. Tudno’s. 
This was univer- 
sally recognised in 
Maitland. Not 
only the congrega- 
tion of St. Tudno’s, 
but the people 
of other denomi- 
nations knew that 
Mr. Simpson was saddled with a wife who was little but 
a drag upon him. They even said that he had been 
on the point of obtaining a call to a great city charge, 
when, his domestic circumstances being inquired into, 
it was universally recognised by the session of that 
company of humble followers of Christ that, however 
suitable the Rev. Boanerges Simpson might be to 
receive £1200 a year for preaching the Carpenter’s 


144 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 


gospel to it, Mrs. Boanerges Simpson was not at all the 
woman to dispense afternoon tea to the session’s spouses 
between the hours of three and six. 

It was, however, also well known that the minister 
of St. Tudno’s bore up under this household trial like 
an angel. His quiet patience with his help unmeet 
became a proverb. He had a bland, vague, upward- 
looking eye, and walked as one wrapped in the 
mysteries of such deep thought as few could fathom. 
When any one glanced at his particular sufferings, he 
sighed and passed lightly to another subject. He had 
a softly episcopal handshake which made some women 
call him blessed, and many men itch to kick him. 
This handshake was one of his chief assets. 

But his great power came out in his sermons. Even 
his enemies admitted that he was noble in the pulpit. 
Yet he was not a natural orator. He had not the 
readiness of resource, the instantaneousness of attack 
and defence requisite for the speaker. His sermons 
were given in an exquisitely varied recitative, and when 
he redelivered them, it was often remarked with 
admiration that he placed the emphasis on the same 
words, made the same pauses, and became affected as 
close to tears as decorum would permit, in precisely the 
same places. 

His care in preparation was often held up to his 
brother ministers in the town of Maitland, among whom 
he was not popular, owing, no doubt, to the jealousy 
which prevails in all professions. Still, they had him 
often to preach for them, for no minister in the country 
could draw such a crowd — or such a collection. There 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 


145 


were half a dozen rich old ladies who were known to 
have Mr. Simpson in their wills, and these accompanied 
him about wherever he preached, like Tabbies following 
a milk jug. There were also a good many ladies of 
various ages who visited at the manse of St. Tudno’s at 
hours when the Reverend Boanerges was known to be 
resting from the labours of sermon-production in the 
drawing-room. They did not often see his wife. She, 
no doubt, felt herself quite unpresentable, poor thing ! 
So one of the visitors was asked to dispense tea. This 
was generally recognised to be as it should be. 

The town of Maitland came as near to being a city 
as some fools come to being geniuses. Maitland has 
an ancient, and, in its early stages, an honourable history. 
It had been a great city when the capital of Scotland 
was a barren rock, and when the fisher steered his 
coracle below the lonely braes of the Clydeside Broomie- 
law. In its latter days it had taken to the manufacture 
of thread and the digging of coal. But its burghers 
have still much pride about them, severely tempered 
with economy. 

Some years ago Maitland resolved on having new 
municipal buildings. The ancient town hall was also 
in its under story the gaol, and it was not seemly that 
the bailies and the very provost should be compelled 
to listen to the sighing of the prisoner whom they had 
just committed for being drunk and disorderly, and who 
in the cells beneath still audibly continued to be the 
latter. The town hall was, therefore, abandoned to the 
victims of police interference, and the new municipal 
buildings rose nobly in the middle of the town. 


146 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 


But when the first assessment of one and tenpence 
in the pound was made on the ratepayers, they rose in 
instant rebellion. Letters in the local papers could not 
ease the smart. They must have the blood of the 
whole town council, and specially of the bailies. The 
provost was held to be a decent man who had been led 
into this bad business against his will. This provost 
was the paragon of provosts. He spoke broad Scots, 
and spoke it, too, with a rollicking local accent which 
went straight to the heart of every Maitland man and 
woman. He had wrinkles round his eyes, and the 
meditative way with him which all meal millers achieve 
from leaning their elbows on the lower halves of their 
mill doors. He sometimes came to the council with 
the white dust of his profession emphasising his homeli- 
ness. The Rev. Boanerges Simpson had a pique at the 
provost. The trenchant Doric sense of the layman cut 
through the pretentious unction of the cleric like a knife 
through soap. But hitherto the opposition had been 
private, for the provost had the strange taste to prefer 
the invisible and incompatible wife to the active and 
brilliant husband. 

The matter of the municipal buildings came to a 
head over the town bell. There was an indignation 
meeting summoned by aggrieved ratepayers, and all the 
correspondents of the local newspapers attended in force. 
The Rev. Boanerges Simpson proposed the first resolu- 
tion, ‘ That it is the opinion of this meeting that the 
proposal to waste the ratepayers’ money in a bell to be 
used for profane purposes is subversive of all morality 
and good government, and the provost and magistrates 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 


147 


(except Councillor MacBean of the Third Ward, who 
voted against it) are requested to resign forthwith.’ 
The Rev. Boanerges was not so fluent as usual. His 
forte was the pulpit. He liked to keep himself before 
the public, but he lacked in a gathering of men his 
personal following of old ladies, and had not quite his 
usual nerve in consequence. The motion was, however, 
unanimously carried, and that vdth great acclamation. 
Resolution after resolution was carried, each more 
sweeping than the last. Enthusiastic indignation rose 
feverishly till the burgesses were almost committed to 
burning the magistrates in front of their own doors. 
Now the provost had been all day from home, and did 
not hear of the meeting till some time after his return. 

‘ ril gie mysel’ a bit wash an’ gang doon,’ he said, 
quietly. 

When he stepped on the platform he was received 
with a storm of howls. The meeting would not hear 
him. Councillor MacBean, who had the credit of being 
able to swing the Third Ward like a dead cat, and who 
thought of standing for provost, led the groans. 

The provost waited smiling. He dusted the meal 
from the creases of his coat, and brushed up his grey 
soft hat with his elbow. He even got out his knife to 
pare his nails. At last he got in a word, and as soon 
as ever his sonorous steady Scots was heard the storm 
fell to a dead calm, for the only man who could sway a 
Maitland audience was on his feet, and the provost knew 
that the hearts of these men were like wax in his hands. 
This was the matter of his speech : 

‘ My freens. Aw was up at Allokirk the day, an’ div 
L 


148 


BOANERGES SIMBSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 


ye ken what the craiturs war sayin’ ? Na, ye’ll no* 
believe me gin Aw tell ye. The assurance o’ the up- 
setting creests is juist by ordinar’. Ye ken that Allokirk 
can never forgie Maitland for bein’ a bigger, bonnier, 
aulder toon, and for haein’ the kings an’ queens o’ braid 
Scotland lying in oor aibbey yaird ower by. Wha but 
a wheen Allokirk jute fowk an’ ither upstart tinkler 
bodies wad lie ablow the jow o’ the Allokirk bell — — ’ 

Cries of ‘ Come to the point ! ’ ‘ We dinna want to 

hear aboot Allokirk. It’s aboot oor ain bell we want 
to hear.’ ‘Ye’ll no’ throw stoor in oor een, provost !’ 

‘ Bide a wee. I’m juist cornin’ to that. This is what 
the Allokirk fowk were sayin’. Ye ken the thocht o’ 
oor braw new toon buildin’ is juist gall and wormwud 
to them. They ken that their toon hall wadna be a 
back kitchen to the Maitland fowk’s, an’ sae, to even 
themsel’s to’ us, what hae the blasties dune but gotten 
a bell to hing in their bit toorock — a twenty-ton bell, 
nae less. An,’ says they, the like o’ that bell wull never 
ring in Maitland toon ! Na, the puir feckless, bankrupt 
bodies o’ Maitland, wi’ their thread an’ their coals, canna 
afford sic a bell as Allokirk has ! Whatna answer wull 
ye gie back, ma frien’s ? Wull ye let Allokirk craw 
ower you? Wull ye sit doon like Henny-penny in the 
hornbuik ^ wi’ your finger in your mooth ? Na, ye’re 
Maitland men, and as sure as yer provost is a Maitland 
man we’ll hing a thirty-ton bell in oor braw too’er, and 
ilka jow o’t, soondin’ across the water, wull tell the 
Allokirk bodies that they’re but cauld kail an’ soor dook 
beside the burghers o’ the Auld Grey Toon ! ’ 

^ A picture in the old-fashioned child’s primer. 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 


149 


The meeting here rose in a frenzy. The thirty-ton 
bell was voted. MacBean was put out feet foremost 
for moving the previous question, and the Rev. Boanerges 
Simpson went home to bring his wife to a sense of her 
position. 

After this the provost was more inclined than before 
to like his worsted antagonist, and even got into the 
habit of attending the church of St. Tudno. 

What bothered him most was the quality of the 
sermons of the Rev. Boanerges Simpson. They were 
certainly full of a subtle sympathy with the suffering and 
down-trodden. An exquisite pathos welled through them. 
It was a remarkable fact that some of the most im- 
partial and intelligent of the congregation listened to 
these productions with their eyes shut, in order that 
they might not have the contrast of the preacher’s 
oleaginous presence and his thrilling words. It was 
also observed and commented upon that on the occasions 
when every eye in the church was riveted upon the 
preacher, his own wife never so much as raised her eyes 
from the bookboard. This was set down to a nature 
averse to the message of grace which so strongly affected 
others. The provost’s sister called his attention to this, 
and even the good man was somewhat shaken in his 
belief in the minister’s wife. Whatever her private 
opinion of her husband, she should certainly have shown 
her reverence for a man so highly gifted with a 
message. 

Day by day, therefore, Mrs. Simpson shrank more 
and more into her own silence. Isolation grew upon 
her till she had walled herself off from her fellow- 


150 BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 

creatures. Then she stopped going to church at all, 
and the Rev. Boanei^es walked along with the seraphic 
smile of a martyr whose burden was almost more than 
he could bear. His sermons became too high strung 
and ethereal for the edification of the workaday sons 
and daughters of men. What was the most extra- 
ordinary thing of all, the pathos and sentiment, the 
spiritual communion, were so clearly a personal experi- 
ence of the preacher, that even those who had been 
repelled by his personality gave him credit for having 
such communion with the unseen as few are privileged 
to attain to in this world. There was a deep belief in 
Maitland that there can be no effect without a sufficient 
cause, for Maitland is above all things a logical place. 
St. Tudno’s became a shrine of pilgrimage from far and 
near, and its gifted and saintly minister seemed to be 
mellowing from a Boanerges into a John. It was 
thought that what he was suffering at home was refining 
his soul. It is thus that the finest spirits are moulded. 
The provost was so touched that he went to ask his 
pardon for any hasty expressions which he might have 
used in the affair of the bell. Mrs. Simpson received 
him and listened with a dull silence to his frank and 
kindly words. 

‘Your guidman an’ me haes oor differences,’ said the 
provost ; ‘ but I wull alloo that there’s naebody atween 
Tweed an’ Tay can come within a lang sea mile o’ him 
for preachin’.’ 

The minister’s wife made a strange reply. 

‘ Would you say as much a year from now, if many 
other people were to turn against him ? ’ she asked. 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 151 

lifting her abased eyes and letting them rest for a 
moment on the kindly face of the good provost. 

‘ Aw’m gye an’ weel used to stickin’ to my opeenion/ 
said the meal miller. ‘ Aw hae seen the Maitland 
fowk’s verdick come roon’ to mine a deal oftener than 
mine whurl aboot to theirs ! ’ 

‘ Then you’ll be a friend to my husband in the days 
to come,’ she said, earnestly. 

‘ That Aw wull ! ’ said the provost, heartily. 

‘ Thank you,’ said Mrs. Simpson ; ‘ thank you more 
than I can tell you. That is what I’ve been praying 
for. I shall sleep sound to-night ! ’ 

And she did. Only she forgot to awaken the next 
morning. The funeral was a great one, for the sake of 
the bereaved mai) ; but every one felt that a barrier to 
the success of the preacher had been providentially 
removed. On the Sabbath following there was such a 
congregation as has never been seen since within the 
walls of St. Tudno’s. The minister surpassed himself. 
There was not a dry eye between the topmost gallery 
and the back seat below the loft where the provost sat. 
Now, in that church it was the custom of the elders to 
take in the Bible and bring it out to the vestry after- 
wards. This they did in rotation. It was the provost’s 
day. As he lifted the Bible, the sermon slid to the 
floor. He picked it up, glanced at it, and turned pale. 
Then he sat down to recover himself. The funeral 
sermon was neatly written out in Mrs, Simps oris own 
hand. 

The Rev. Boanerges never preached another great 
sermon — never one even mediocre. It was said that 


152 


BOANERGES SIMPSON’S ENCUMBRANCE 


grief had permanently weakened his faculties. It is 
strange that men cannot benefit by the opportunities 
which Providence makes for them. There were many 
who wondered that the provost stood by him ; but the 
meal miller was not the man to forget a word passed to 
a dead woman, and he kept her secret well. He was 
(and is) the pearl of provosts. 

As for the Rev. Boanerges, he married again within 
a year, a maiden lady with 0,000 in consols and a 
temper — both her own. Her husband is a man of 
great reputation. He has retired to a comfortable estate 
in the Highlands, which shows that true merit is always 
rewarded. He has since put out two volumes of 
sermons, which are allowed by the religious press to be 
among the most subtle and suggestive which have been 
published this century. They ought to be in every 
preacher’s library. His first wife had carefully copied 
them all out for the printer, which seems to be about the 
only useful thing she did during her life. But the funeral 
sermon was written in the minister’s large sprawling 
characters. There is no monument over the grave of 
the first Mrs. Simpson, but the provost often walks out 
there of an evening and lays a white rose upon it. 



A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF 
THE STREETS 


LEG ^ KELLY was out of his 
latitude, and knew it. He was a 
Pleasance laddie, and he lived in 
one of the garret rooms of a big 


< land,’ as full of passages and bye- 
ways as a rabbit warren. He was 
not a Christian, was Cleg Kelly. 
Neither was his father. He said he 
was a ‘ snow-shoveller,’ and as his pro- 
fession could be carried on during a 
very limited number of days in the 
year, he made his fellow-citizens chargeable for his keep 
during the rest of the year, and personally collected the 
needful. So his fellow-citizens thoughtfully provided 
for his accommodation a splendid edifice on the side of 
the Calton — the same which American tourists wax 
enthusiastic about as they come into the Scots metropolis 
by the North British Railway, mistaking its battlemented 
towers for those of Edinburgh Castle. 

^ ‘Cleg’ means, in the dialect of the Lowlands, the small common 
gadfly or horse-fly. 


154 


A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE STREETS 


Here Mr. Timothy Kelly occupied a beautifully 
clean and healthy apartment for at least six months in 
the year. During this time he worked at a Government 
contract, and so, of course, could not devote much time 
to the education of his son and heir. But Tim Kelly, 
though a fascinating study, must not tempt us away 
from his equally accomplished son. As was said at the 
beginning. Cleg Kelly was out of his latitude, and he 
did not like it. It was Sunday afternoon, and he had 
been across the narrow isthmus of houses which separates 
the Alps of the Salisbury Crags from the Lombard plain 
of the Meadows. He had been putting in his attend- 
ances at five Sunday Schools that day, for it was the 
leafy month of June when ‘trips’ abound, and Cleg 
Kelly was not quite so green as the summer foliage ; 
besides all which, about five o’clock there are lots of 
nice clean children in that part of the town on their way 
home from ‘ Congregational ’ Sabbath schools. These 
did not speak to Cleg, for he only went to the Mission 
schools which were specially adapted for such as he. 
Also, he wore no stockings. But Cleg Kelly was not 
bashful, so he readily spoke to them. He noted, especi- 
ally, a spruce party of three leaving a chemist’s shop on 
the shortest track between the park and the meadows, 
and he followed them down through the narrow defile 
of Gifford Park — thoughts of petty larceny crystallising 
in his heart. Ere they could escape through the needle’s 
eye at the further end, Cleg Kelly had accosted them 
after his kind. 

‘ Hey, you, gie’s that gundy, or I’ll knock your 
turnip heids thegither ! ’ The three lambs stood at 


A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE STREETS 


155 


bay, huddled close together, and helplessly bleated 
feeble derisives at the wolf who has headed them off 
from safety ; but their polite and Englishy tone was a 
source of Homeric laughter to this Thersites of the 
Pleasance. He mocked their decent burgher attire ; 
he sparred up to them — his ‘ neives ’ describing stately 
circles like a paddle wheel — and, shaking a murky fist 
an inch below their several noses, he invited them 
individually to ‘ smell that,’ and then inform him where 
they would like it applied — together with other resource- 
ful amenities, as the auctioneer’s advertisements say, too 
numerous to mention. While the marauding wolf was 
thus at play with his innocent victims, scorning their 
feeble efforts at rejoinder, and circumventing without 
difficulty their yet feebler efforts at flight, it so happened 
that a member of the city force, to whom Master Cleg 
Kelly was well known, stopped for a moment to look 
down the aristocratic avenues of the park, bordered with 
frugal lines of ‘ ash backets ’ for all ornament. The 
coincidence of necessity and presence is remarkable, but 
not unprecedented. He was a young officer of but 
eighteen months’ standing, and his district had been 
previously in the ‘ Sooth Back,’ a district to which the 
talent of Master Kelly was indigenous. Had the officer 
been six months more in the service, he would probably 
have contented himself with a warning trumpet note 
which would have sent the enemy flying ; but being 
young and desirous of small distinctions, he determined 
to ‘ nab the young scamp and take him along.’ He had 
full justification for this, for at this moment a howl told 
that the assault had reached the stage of battery, and 


156 


A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE STREETS 


that the young ‘ gundy ’ garrotter was qualifying for the 
cat at an early age, by committing robbery with 
violence. 

It was at this moment that Cleg felt that there's no 
place like home. He was a stranger in a strange land, 
where he knew not even the walls that had nicks in 
them, climbable by the sooty toe of an eleven-year-old 
city boy. He could not tell whether any particular 
‘ land ' had a ladder and trap-door — valuable right-of- 
way upon the roof. He knew not the alleys which 
gave double exit by unexpected elbows, and he could 
not shun those which invited with fair promises, but 
which were really traps with no way of escape. He 
did not wish, in that awful moment, that he had been a 
better boy, as his young Sunday-school teacher in 
Hunker Court had often urged him to become ; what 
he wanted was the ‘ Sooth Back,' ten yards start, and 
the rigour of the game. But there was no time for 
meditation, for the heavy - footed but alert young 
‘bobby' was almost upon him. Cleg Kelly sprang 
sideways and dived into the first convenient entry. 
Then he skimmed up some steps that wound skyward, 
down again, and along a passage with not a single side 
turning. He heard his pursuer lumbering after him, 
and his own heart kettle-drumming in his ears. An 
unexpected doorway gave outward as his weight came 
on it, and he found himself in a curious court some- 
where at the back of Simon Square, as near as he 
could make out. There was a strange square block 
towards one side of the open space, round which he 
ran ; and, climbing up a convenient rone or water pipe, 



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A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE STREETS 


159 


he squirmed himself through a stair window, crossed the 
landing of an uninhabited house, and looked down on 
the interior of a court which was well known to him, 
from the safe elevation of a first-floor window. As he 
rested, panting, he said to himself that he ‘ kenned 
where he was noo.^ It was the court which contained 
one of his too numerous Sunday schools. Hunker 
Court Mission School was ^ scaling.’ As it was the 
school where there was most ‘ fun,’ it was also the 
school which was best beloved by that scholar who was 
duly enrolled in Miss Celie Tennant’s class [No. 6] 
as — 

C, Kelly ^ age 14, Residence^ 200 Pleasance, 

— the age being a gratuitous impromptu on the part of 
Cleg in order to impress his teacher with a sense of his 
importance — in his own language, ‘a big lee.’ ‘Fun’ 
in this Mission school meant chiefly bombarding the 
teachers as they ran the gauntlet after the school was 
dismissed, specially one, who for private reasons was 
known as ‘ Pun’ o’ Cannles.’ All this happened years 
ago, and of course there are no such schools in Edin- 
burgh now. But Celie Tennant, a cheery little lady 
with the brightest eyes that Cleg had ever seen, had 
never been molested. This day Cleg watched, with the 
delight of the bird that has just escaped the fowler’s 
snare, the ‘ clodding ’ of the teachers, and their dis- 
composed look as the missiles interfered with their 
dignity. He was a connoisseur in these matters, and 
applauded critically as a cunningly directed cabbage 
heart dropped reposefully into ‘ Pun’ o’ Cannles’ ’ tail 
pockets. He remembered how his ears had rung under 


i6o A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE STREETS 

the very hand which now extracted the cabbage under 
a galling cross fire. He observed how Humpy Joe, the 
pride of Simon Square, deftly removed the ‘ lum hat ’ of 
the newest teacher, who had yet to learn what clothes 
to come in when he set out to instruct the youth of 
Gifford Park. He saw with complaisance Archie 
Drabble, the ‘ deil ’ of the school, prepare a hand 
grenade of moist mud for the superintendent, as he 
thought. The young idea of the city needs not to be 
taught how to shoot. He rubbed his hands with glee 
to think how juicily and satisfactorily the ‘ pyeowe ’ 
would spread, and he became distinctly particeps 
crhninibus as the most gleeful of accessories before the 
fact. But at this moment out walked his own teacher. 
Miss Tennant, on her way home through Archer’s Hall 
by way of the Meadows. Now Cleg Kelly was secretly 
and desperately in love with his teacher, and he would 
willingly have gone to school every Sunday, simply to 
be scolded by her for misbehaviour. He found that 
this was the best way to keep her attention fixed upon 
him ; and the boy who sat next him in class had a 
poor time of it. It pleased Cleg to notice that his 
teacher had a new summer hat and dress on, one that 
he had not seen before. Cleg became sorry, for the 
first time, that he had waited to take it out of these 
‘ softies.’ This was the nearest that he ever came to 
repentance. It struck him that he might have looked 
at the hat and dress, and the face between, for an hour. 
It is a mistake to think that boys do not notice dress. 
The boy, as has been said before more than once, is the 
father of the man. Cleg was complacently feeling a 



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A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE STREETS 163 

proprietary interest in both the summer hat and bright 
print dress, when suddenly his eye caught the slouching 
figure of Archie Drabble, standing exactly beneath. 
Cleg’s face whitened as he took in his intention. Could 
it be to desecrate the spotless hat and dress of his. 
Cleg’s, teacher, hitherto held inviolate by the strange 
chivalry of Hunker Court School ? Small time there 
was for the true knight to don his armour and ride 
cap-a-pie into the lists. There was no time -to blow a 
trumpet, even had one been handy. There were no 
heralds to announce the victory of the champion of 
distressed demoiselles ; but all these could not have 
rendered the feat of arms (if so it might be called which 
was mostly legs) more rounded and complete. As the 
cowardly arm of the ‘ Drabble ’ — fit name for knight 
unknightly — paused a moment to gather force for the 
dastard’s blow ; and even as the unconscious lady of 
the Road Perilous half turned to settle her skirts into a 
daintier swing, a bolt fell from the blue, a deus from 
the machina — a small boy arrayed completely in two 
well-ventilated garments, sprang with horrid yell from 
a first-floor window, and, sudden as Jove’s thunderbolt, 
struck the audacious Drabble to the earth. Then 
springing up, this impish Mercury of Hunker Court 
dowsed the prostrate one with his own hand grenade, 
hoisted him with a grimy foot in lieu of a petard, once 
more returned him to earth with that clenched organ to 
which the ‘ softies ’ had been invited to apply their 
noses. Having performed a war dance on the prostrate 
foe which had small store of knightly courtesy in it, 
Cleg, with the derring-do of battle upon him, dared the 

:r 


164 


A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE STREETS 


assembled Mission to the unequal fray ; and, no 
champion accepting, presently took himself off, as 
unconventionally as he came, turning three double cart 
wheels through the archway that led in the direction of 
the Meadows. So uplifted was he by the pride of 
success, that he looked about valiantly for the ‘ bobby.’ 
He was not in sight. 

‘ It’s as weel for him ! ’ said the hero of battles. 

As Miss Celie Tennant waited at her own gate a 
moment that afternoon, she was aware, as heroines often 
are, of the presence of a hero. He was small and very 
dirty, and he stood by a lamp-post abstracted, scratching 
one bare leg with the toe of the other foot. It is a 
primeval attitude, and Sir John Lubbock will be able 
to explain it. Something familiar caught the lady’s 
attention. 

‘ Is that you, Charles ? ’ she asked ; ‘ why didn’t you 
come to Sunday school to-day ? ’ She was under the 
impression that ‘ C.’ in her roll-book stood for Charles. 
This was a mistake. 

Charles gasped inarticulately, and was understood to 
say that he would be on view next Sabbath without fail. 

Celie Tennant patted him kindly on the head, tripped 
gracefully up the steps, and paused to nod ere she 
reached the door. Not till then did Cleg Kelly find 
his tongue. 

‘ Pit on the new frock,’ he said, ‘ dinna be feared, 
Airchie Drabble ’ill throw nae mair glaur ! ’ 

‘ Thank you, Charles ! ’ said the summer hat, in 
sweet unconsciousness of his meaning, as the door closed. 
This is how Cleg Kelly began to be a Christian. 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY, 
MISSION WORKER 



NQUIRING friends request 
the latest news of Mr. C. 
Kelly, of the ^ Sooth Back.’ 
We are most happy to 
supply them, for Cleg is a 
favourite of our own. Since 
we revealed how he began to 
become a Christian, Cleg has felt 
himself more or less of a public 
' character ; but he is modest, and 
for several weeks has kept out of our 
way, apparently lest he should be put into 
another book. A too appreciative superintendent un- 
fortunately read the plain little story of Cleg’s gallant 
knight-errantry to the senior division of his sometime 
school, and Cleg blushed to find himself famous. 
Consequently he left Hunker Court for good. But for 
all that he is secretly pleased to be in a book, and 
having received our most fervent assurance that he will 
not be made into a ‘ tract,’ he has signified that he is 
appeased, and that no legal proceedings will be taken. 


i66 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


Cleg, does not so much mind a book, a book is respect- 
able ; but he draws the line at tracts. He says that he 
is ‘ doon on them tracks.’ Even as a reformed character 
they raise the old Adam in him. A good lady, sweeping 
by in her carriage the other day, threw one graciously 
to the ragged lad, who was standing in a moment of 
meditation pirouetting his cap on the point of his boot, 
half for the pleasure of seeing that he had actually a 
boot upon his foot, and half to intimate to all concerned 
that he has not become proud and haughty because of 
the fact. The good lady was much surprised by that 
small boy’s action, and has a poorer opinion than ever 
of the ‘ lower orders.’ 

She is now sure that there must be some very care- 
ful grading in heaven before it can be a comfortable 
place of permanent residence. Her idea of doing good 
has always been to go through the houses of the poor 
with the gracious hauteur of a visitant from another and 
a better world, and to scatter broadcast largess of tracts 
and good advice. The most pleasant way of doing 
this, she finds, is from a carriage, for some of the 
indigent have a way of saying most unpleasant things ; 
but a pair of spanking bays can sweep away from all 
expressions of opinion. Besides, tracts delivered in this 
way bring with them a sense of proper inferiority as 
coming from one who would say, ‘ There, take that, you 
poor wicked people, and may it do you good ! ’ Cleg 
Kelly was ‘ again’ tracks.’ But after a single moment 
of stupefied surprise that this woman should insult him, 
he rushed for the tract. The lady smiled at his eager- 
ness, and pointed out to her companion, a poor lady 



AN EDINBURGH STREET 



THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 169 

whose duty it was to agree with her mistress, the eager 
twinkling eyes and flushed face of Cleg as he pursued 
the bays. Cleg at short distances could beat any pair 
of horses in Edinburgh. He had not raced with 
bobbies and fire-engines for nothing. He was in fine 
training, and just as the carriage slackened to turn past 
the immense conglomerate castle which guards the St. 
Leonard’s Park entrance. Cleg shot up to the side at 
which his benefactor sat. He swiftly handed her a 
parcel, and so vanished from the face of the earth. 
There is no safer hiding-place than the coal-waggons 
full and empty that stand in thousands just over the 
wall. The good lady opened the little parcel with her 
usual complaisance. It was her own tract, and it 
contained a small selection of articles — the staple 
product, indeed, of the Pleasance ash-backets — im- 
primis^ one egg-shell filled with herring bones, item — 
a cabbage top in fine gamey condition, the head of a 
rat some time deceased, and the tail of some other 
animal so worn by age as to make identification 
uncertain. On the top lay the dirtiest of all scrawls. 
It said, ‘ With thanks for yer traksi The lady fell back 
on her cushions so heavily that the C springs creaked, 
and the poor companion groped frantically for the 
smelling-bottle. She knew that she would have a 
dreadful time of it that night ; but her mistress has 
resolved that she will distribute no more tracts from her 
carriage. The lower orders may just be left to perish. 
Their blood be on their own heads ; she has once and 
for all washed her hands of them. 

Many people may be of opinion that Cleg Kelly, 


170 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


judging by his first exploit this Friday morning of which 
we speak, had not advanced very far along the narrow 
way of righteousness ; but this was not Cleg's own 
opinion. He felt that he had done a good deed, and 



EDINBURGH ROOFS 


he said within himself, ‘ Them ould women dae mair ill 
wi' their tracks than twa penny gaffs an' a side-show ! ' 

Then Cleg Kelly went on to his next business. It 
had to do with keeping the fifth commandment. He 
had heard about it the Sunday before, not at the for- 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


171 

sakcn Hunker Court, but at a little elass for boys at the 
foot of the Pleas- 
ance, in a court 
there, which his 
teacher, Miss Celie 
Tennant, was or- 
ganising for lads 
of Cleg’s age or a 
little older. It was 
a daring undertak- 
ing for one so 
young, and all her 
friends tried to stop 
her, and called it 
foolhardy ; but 
Celie Tennant be- 
ing, as Cleg admir- 
ingly said, ‘ no’ big, 
but most michty 
plucky,’ had found 
out her power in 
managing the most 
rebellious larrikins 
that walked on hob- 
nails. Moreover, 
the work had 
sought her, not she 
it. Her praises 
had been so con- 
stantly chanted by 



hunker court 


Cleg that she had been asked to take pity on a num- 


172 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


bcr of the ‘ Sooth Back gang/ and have a class 
for them in the evenings. It was manifestly impossible 
to receive such a number of wild loons at Hunker 
Court. They were every one upon terms of open 
war with the Gifford Park train-bands ; and had a 
couple of them shown their faces in the neighbourhood 



COURTS AND CLOSES 


at any hour of the day or night, the ‘ Cooee-EE ' of the 
Park would have sounded, and fists and brick-bats 
would have been going in a couple of shakes. Clearly, 
then, as they could not come to her without breaking 
her Majesty's peace, it was her duty to go to them. 
To do them justice, they were quite willing to risk it ; 
but Celie felt that it would hardly be doing herself 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


173 


justice to sow her seed so very near to the fowls of the 
air. So Cleg proudly took his friend down to the 
* Sooth Back/ where there was a kind-hearted watch- 
man who had occasionally let Cleg sleep in some warm 
place about the ‘ works ’ at which he was on night duty. 
To him Miss Tennant was introduced, and by him was 
taken into the presence of the junior partner, who was 
sitting in a very easy attitude indeed, with his back 
against his desk, and balancing himself precariously on 
one leg of a stool. He effected a descent successfully, 
and blushed becomingly, for he was a very junior 
partner indeed, and he had more than once met Miss 
Tennant at a West-end evening party. But when Miss 
Celie, infinitely self-possessed, stated her business in 
clear-cut accents of maidenly reserve, the Very Junior 
Partner instantly manifested almost too great an interest 
in the concern, and offered the use of a disused store- 
room where there was a good fireplace. 

‘ I shall see to it. Miss Tennant/ he said, That there is 
a fire for you there whenever you wish to use the room.’ 

‘ Thank you, Mr. Iverach/ returned Celie, with just 
the proper amount of gratitude, ‘ but I would not dream 
of troubling you. One of my boys will do that.’ 

The Very Junior would have liked to say that he 
did not consider it quite the thing for a young lady to 
be in the purlieus of the ‘ Sooth Back ’ after nightfall. 
Indeed, he would have been glad to offer his escort ; 
but he did not say so, for he was a very nice Junior 
Partner indeed, and his ingenuous blush was worth a 
fortune to him as a certificate of character. He therefore 
contented himself with saying : 


174 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


‘ If there is anything that I can do for you, you will 
always be good enough to let me know/ 

Celie Tennant thanked him, and gave him her hand. 
He came as far as the street with her, but did not offer 
to see her home. He was no fool, though so Very 
Junior a Partner. 

Celie Tennant established her night-school in the 
Sooth Back with Cleg Kelly as her man Friday. Cleg 
showed at once a great faculty for organisation, and he 
added the function of police to his other duties. On 
the principle of ‘ Set a thief,’ etc., he ought to have 
made the best of policemen, and so he did. He was 
not by any means the biggest or the heaviest, but he 
had far more wild-cat in him than any of his mates. 
Once he had taken the gully on the Salisbury Crags on 
his way to safety, when he was too much pressed by 
force of circumstances to go round the ordinary way ; 
and it was quite an everyday habit of his to call upon 
his friends by way of the roof and the skylights 
therein. 

Celie Tennant was opening her night-school this 
Friday evening, and Cleg Kelly was on his way thither 
to get the key from the porter, his good friend at most 
times. He knew where there was an old soap-box 
which would make rare kindling, and he had a paraffin 
cask also in his mind, though as yet he had not made 
any inquiries as to the ownership of this latter. On his 
way he rushed up to the seldom-visited garret that was 
the domicile of his parent, Mr. Timothy Kelly, when he 
came out of gaol. During these intervals Cleg withdrew 
himself from night quarters, only occasionally recon- 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


175 


noitring the vicinity, if he wanted any of his hid treasures 
very keenly. He had as many as twenty ‘ hidie-holes ' 
in the floor, walls, eaves, 
and roof of the wretched 
dwelling that was his only 
home. Some of these his 
father frequently broke into, 
and scattered his poor 
horde, confiscating the 
coppers, and sending the 
other valuables through the 
glassless windows, but on 
the whole Cleg could beat 
his parent at the game of 
hide-and-seek. When the 
evening came, however, Cleg 
hovered in the neighbour- 
hood till he saw whether 
his father went straight 
from his lair, growling and 
grumbling, to Hare’s Public, 
or remained in bed on the 
floor with certain curious 
implements around him. 

If the latter were the case. 

Cleg vanished, and was 
seen no more in the neigh- 
bourhood for some days, 
because he knew well that 
his father was again qualifying for her Majesty’s 
hospitality, and that was a business he always declined 



* A PLACE OF STEEP STAIRS ’ 


176 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


to be mixed up in. He knew that his father would in 
all probability be ‘ lagged ' by the morrow’s morn. Cleg 
hoped that he would be, and the longer sentence his 
father got, the better pleased his son was. Once when 
Timothy Kelly got six months for house-breaking, a 
small boy was ignominiously expelled from the back 
benches of the court for saying, ‘ Hip, Hooray.’ It was 
Cleg. His father, however, heard, and belted him for 
it unmercifully when he came out, saying between every 
stroke and bound, ‘ Take that, ye sorra ! Was it for 
this I brought yez up, ye spalpeen o’ the worrld ? An’ 
me at all the trubble an’ expinse av yer rearin’ — you 
to cry ‘ hooroosh ’ when yer own father got a sixer 
in quod. Be me conscience an’ sleeve-buttons, but 
I’d be dooin’ my duty but poorly by Father Brady 
an’ the Tin Commandments if I didn’t correct 
yez ! ’ 

So nobody could say that Cleg was not well brought 
up. 

If, however. Cleg saw his father take the straight 
road for the Public, he knew that there was still a shot 
in the old man’s locker, and that there were enough of 
the ‘ shiners for another booze,’ as it was expressed 
classically in these parts. He betook himself to his own 
devices, therefore, till closing time ; but about eleven 
o’clock he began to haunt the vicinity of Hare’s, and to 
peep within whenever the door opened. On one 
occasion he opened the door himself, and nearly got his 
head broken with the pound weight that came towards 
it. They did not stand on ceremony with small boys 
in that beershop. They knocked them down, and then 







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METROPOLITAN WEATHER 





THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


179 


Inquired their errand afterwards. The landlord came 
from Jedburgh. 

When his father came out of the Public, Cleg saw 
him home in original fashion. He had a curiously 
shaped stick which he employed on these occasions. It 



hare’s public 


was the fork of a tree that he had got from a very kind 
’builder of the neighbourhood whose name was Younger. 
This stick was only produced at such times, and the 
police of the district, men with children of their own, 
and a kindly blind eye towards Cleg’s ploys (when not 
too outrageous), did not interfere with his manifestations 

N 


i8o 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


of filial piety. Indeed, it was none such a pleasant job 
to take Tim Kelly td the lock-up, even with ‘The Twist^ 
on him, and Cleg harassing the official rear with his 
crooked stick. So they generally let the father and son 
alone, though every now and then some energetic young 
man, new to the district, interfered. He did it just 
once. 

Having seen his father safely into Hare’s, Cleg went 
down the Pleasance with a skip and a jump to light his 
fire. He found another boy haling off his soap-box. 
Cleg threw a ‘ paver ’ to halt him, much as a privateer 
throws a shot athwart the bows of a prize as a signal 
to slacken speed. The boy turned instantly, but seeing 
Cleg coming with the swiftness of the wind, and his 
conscience telling him that he could make good no claim 
to the soap-box ; knowing, moreover, that Cleg Kelly 
could ‘ lick him into shivereens,’ he abandoned his prize 
and took to his heels, pausing at a safe distance to 
bandy epithets and information as to ancestors with 
Cleg. But Cleg marched off without a word, which 
annoyed the other boy much more than the loss of the 
box. That was the fortune of war, but what would 
happen if Cleg Kelly took to getting proud ? He stood 
a moment in thought. A light broke on him. Cleg 
had a pair of boots with a shine on them. He had 
it. That was the reason of this aristocratic reserve. 

The lads who came to the class first that night were 
few and evil. The bulk of the better boys were work- 
ing in shoe factories in the suburbs, and could not get 
there at seven. That was a full hour too early for 
them, and the lads who arrived were there simply ‘ on 





EDINBURGH OLD HOUSES 




THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 183 

for a lark/ But they did not know Miss Cecilia 
Tennant, and they had reckoned without Mr. C. Kelly, 
who had resolved that he would be hawk to their larks. 
The half-dozen louts sat lowering and leering in the neat 
and clean storeroom in which the Very Young Partner, 
Mr. Donald Iverach, had arranged with his own hand 
a chair, a table, and a good many forms, which he had 
been at the expense of sending the porter to buy from the 
founder of a bankrupt sect who lately had had a meeting- 
house left on his hands. The Very Youngest was pre- 
pared to say that he had ‘ found ’ these lying about the 
premises, had he been questioned about the matter. 
And so he had, but the porter had put them there first. 
But Celie Tennant took what the gods had sent her, 
and asked no questions ; though, not being simpler than 
other young women of her determination of character, 
she had her own ideas as to where they came from. 
Celie asked the company to stand up as she entered, 
which with some nudging and shuffling they did, where- 
upon she astounded them by shaking hands with them. 
This set them rather on their beam-ends for a moment, 
and they did not recover any power for mischief till 
Celie asked them to close their eyes during prayer. 
Standing up at her desk, she folded her little hands and 
closed her own eyes to ask the God whom she tried to 
serve (surely a different God from the one whom the 
tract-scattering woman worshipped) to aid her and help 
the lads. Cleg Kelly watched her with adoring eyes. 
He had heard of the angels. She had often told him 
about them, but he privately backed his teacher against 
the best of them. When Celie opened her eyes no one 


184 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


was visible save Cleg, who stood with his eyes aflame. 
The class had vanished. 

‘ The dirty bliggards/ said Cleg, the tongue of 
his father coming back to him in his excitement ; ‘ I’ll 
bring them up to the scratch by the scruff av their 
impident necks ! * 

So he darted underneath the forms, and shortly 
reappeared with a couple of much bigger boys clinging 
on to him, and belabouring him with all their might. 
Wresting himself clear for a moment. Cleg dashed up 
the green blind which covered the small single-pane 
window in the gable, and turned to bay. The two 
whom he had brought up from the depths made a dash 
at him as he passed, overturned the teacher’s table in 
their eagerness to prevent him from getting to the door; 
but it was not the door that Cleg wanted to reach. It 
was his crook, which he had cunningly hitched to the 
back of the teacher’s chair. With that he turned 
valiantly to bay, making the table a kind of fortification. 

‘ Sit down. Miss,’ he said, reassuringly ; ‘ I’ll do for 
them, shure.’ 

At this moment the outer door opened, and his 
friend, the night-watchman, arrived armed with a 
formidable stick, the sight of which, and the knowledge 
that they were trapped, took all the tucker out of these 
very cowardly young men. 

‘ It was only a bit of fun. Cleg !’ they whined. 

‘ Get out av this ! ’ shouted Cleg, dancing in his fury ; 
and out of this they got, the watchman’s stick doing its 
duty as they passed, and his dog hanging determinedly 
on to their ankles. 



LOOKING INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE UNDERWORLD 





THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 187 

What surprised them most was a sudden and un- 
expected hoist they each received, apparently from the 
door of the yard, which deposited them on the street 
with their systems considerably jarred. The Very 
Junior Partner smiled thoughtfully as he rubbed his 
toe. For the first time in his life he wished that he 
had worn boots both larger and heavier. ‘ But ’twill 
suffice, ’twill serve ! ’ he quoted, as he turned away into 
his office ; for, by a strange coincidence, he was working 
late that night. The Senior Partner knew that he had 
given up an engagement to go to a dance that evening 
in order to work up some business that had been 
lying over. He rubbed his hands delightedly. 

‘ Donald is taking to the business at last,’ he told 
his wife as they prepared for bed. 

Celie had taken no part in this scene, but she was 
far too energetic and fearless a young woman to remain 
long quiescent. She went round the benches, and as 
she came in sight of each grovelling lout she ordered 
him to get up, and, abashed and cowed, they rose one 
by one to their feet. The dust of the floor had made 
no apparent change in their original disarray. They 
stood grinning helplessly and inanely, like yokels before 
a show at a country fair ; but there was no heart in 
their affectation of mirth. The discomfiture of their 
comrades, and the sound of the watchman’s oak ‘ rung ’ 
had been too much for them. Then, for five lively 
minutes. Miss Cecilia’s tongue played like lambent 
lightning about their ears, and they visibly wilted before 
her. 

It was now eight o’clock, and the genuine members 


88 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


of the class began to put in an appearance, and each of 
them was welcomed with the most friendly of greetings 
from the teacher : and as each passed, Cleg’s left eyelid 
drooped suddenly upon his cheek, so decorously that 
no one could call it a wink. The four malcontents 
moved for the door, but the clear voice of Miss 
Tennant brought them to a stand. 

‘ Sit down, all of you, and speak to me at the close 
of the class.’ 

So they sat down, being well aware that they had 
not a sympathiser in the room. It had been their 
intention to ‘ raise a dust ’ before the arrival of the 
factory brigade, and then to get clear off; and, barring 
Cleg Kelly, they would have done it. Cleg did not yet 
go to the factory, for the manager would not believe that 
he was thirteen, though Cleg had told him so times 
without number ; he had even on one occasion stretched 
a point and as vainly tried fourteen. Cleg Kelly went 
to school ever since he became a reformed character ; 
but not every day, so as to prevent the teaeher from 
becoming too conceited. However, he looked in 
occasionally when he had nothing better to do. If he 
happened to be cold when he entered, in about half an 
hour he was quite warm. 

What Celie Tennant said to these four louts will 
never be known — they have never told ; but it is suffi- 
cient to say that they became pillars of the ‘ Sooth 
Back’ Mission and Night School, and needed no more 
attention than any of the others. 

The Very Junior Partner and Cleg Kelly both saw 
home the teacher that night, walking close together ; 



A QUEER CORNER OF THE OLD TOWN 




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THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


191 

though, of course, entirely ignoring each other, each 
some hundred yards behind Miss Tennant, who walked 
serene in the consciousness of lonely courage, her roll- 
book in one hand and her skirt daintily held in the 
other, walking with that charming side-swing which 
both her escorts thought adorable. They did not 
communicate this to each other. On the contrary. 
Cleg took a ‘ gob ^ of hard mud in his hand, and stood 
a moment in doubt, dividing the swift mind, whether or 
no to ‘ bust the swell’s topper in.’ But a consciousness 
of the excellence of that young man’s intentions pre- 
served the shiny crown which it had cost a shilling to 
have ironed that morning at the Shop-up-three-Stcps 
at the corner of the North Bridge. The Very Junior 
liked to go spruce to business. 

On his return to the yard, Cleg Kelly found that 
his day’s work was not yet done. One of his special 
chums came to tell him that ‘Hole i’ the Wa’,’ the 
biggest of the louts first expelled, was thirsting for his 
blood, and had dared him to fight that very night. 
Now, had Cleg been more advanced in reformation, he 
would of course have refused, and given his voice for 
peace ; but then, you see, he was only a beginner. He 
sent his friend to tell ‘ Hole i’ the Wa” that he would 
wait for him in the ‘ Polissman’s Yard.’ This was a 
court at the back of a police station in the vicinity, 
which could only be entered by a low ‘ pend ’ or 
vaulted passage, though commanded from above by 
the high windows of the station-house. It had long 
been a great idea of Cleg’s to have a battle royal under 
the very nose of the constituted authority of the city. 


192 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


Thither he resorted, and in a little a crowd of his 
friends and his foes followed him, all protesting that he 
could not mean to fight fair so near to the ‘ bobbies’ ’ 
abode. But Cleg unfolded his scheme, which instantly 



AN EDINBURGH PEND 


placed him on the giddy apex of popularity. He got 
them to roll a heavy barrel which stood in one corner 
of the yard into the ‘ pend,’ which it almost completely 
blocked up, and he himself fixed it in position with 
some of the great iron curved shods which the lorrymen 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


193 



used to stop their coal waggons on the steep streets of 
the south-side. It stood so firm that nothing short of 
dynamite could have shifted it. 

The fight proceeded, but into its details we need not 
enter. It was truly Homeric. Cleg flitted here and 
there like the active insect from which he got his name, 


A CANONGATE CLOSE 

and stung wherever he could get an opening. The 
shouts of the spectators might have been heard in that 
still place for the better part of a mile, and in a few 
minutes all the police who were on duty were thunder- 
ing on the barrel, and all those who had been in bed 
manned the windows in dishabille, and threatened the 
combatants and spectators by name. 


194 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


Cleg Kelly, dancing ever more wildly round his 
adversary, revolving his fists like the spokes of a 
bicycle, shouted defiance. 

‘ Come on, Hole,’ he cried, ‘ ye’re no’ worth a 
buckie at fechtin ! ’ and as he circled near the ‘ pend,’ 
and heard the heaves of the labouring officers of justice, 
he called out: ‘You, Langshanks, cast yer coat an’ 
crawl through the bung ; ye micht ken that the 
sergeant’s ower fat. Hae ye nae sense ? ’ 

There was laughter aloft in the station windows. 
But somebody at the outside had brought a sledge 
hammer, and at the first blow the barrel resolved itself 
into its component staves, and the police tumbled in, 
falling headlong over Cleg’s waggon clamps. 

Then there was a wild scurry of the lads up the 
piles of casks and rubbish at the back of the yard, and 
over the outhouses and roofs. Cleg was not first in 
getting away, but he had studied the locality, and he 
had his plans cut and dried. He would have been 
ashamed to have been caught now that he was on his 
way to be a reformed character. In half an hour he 
was waiting with crooked stick to ‘ boost ’ his father 
home when he was duly cast out of Hare’s Public at 
the stroke of eleven as the completed produce of that 
establishment. 

So in due time, and with many hard words from 
Timothy, they neared the den which they called home. 
At the foot of the long stair Timothy Kelly lay down 
with the grunt of a hog, and refused to move or speak. 
He would arise for no punchings, however artistic, 
with the knobbiest portions of the stick, and Cleg paused. 



AN EDINBURGH WET NIGHT 





THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


197 


for the first time that day, almost in despair. A police- 
man came round the corner, flashing the light of his 
bull’s-eye right and left. Cleg’s heart stood still. It 
was the lengthy officer whom he had called ^ Langshanks,’ 



and invited to come through the bung. He feared that 
he was too kenspeckle to escape. He went over to him, 
and taking a tug at his hair, which meant manners, 
said : 

‘ Please, officer, will ye gie me a lift up the stair wi* 
my faither ? ’ 


198 


THE PROGRESS OF CLEG KELLY 


The policeman whistled a long, low whistle, and 
laughed. 

‘ Officer ! ’ says he, ‘ Officer ! Be the powers, ^twas 
‘‘Langshanks ” ye called me the last time, ye thief o’ 
the wurrld ! ’ said the man, who was of national kin to 
Cleg. 

So they twain helped their compatriot unsteadily to 
his den at the head of the stairs. 

‘Ye’re the cheekiest young shaver I ivver saw,’ said 
Longshanks, admiringly, as he turned away ; ‘ but 
there’s some good in yez ! ’ 

Cleg Kelly locked the door on the outside, said his 
prayers like the reformed character that he was, and 
laid him down on the mat to sleep the sleep of the just. 
The Junior Partner always saw Miss Tennant home 
after this. He calls her ‘ Celie ’ now. She has been 
meaning to tell him for the last month that he must 
not do so any more. 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


The family of the late Tyke M‘Lurg consisted of three 
loons and a lassie. Tyke had never done anything for 
his children except share with a short-lived and shadowy 
mother the responsibility of bringing them into the 
world. The time that he could spare from his profes- 
sion of poacher, he had systematically devoted to 
neglecting them. Tyke had solved successfully for 
many years the problem of how to live by the least 
possible expenditure of labour. Kind ladies had taken 
him in hand time and again. They had provided 
clothes for his children, which Tyke had primarily 
converted into coin of the realm, and indirectly into 
liquid refreshment, at Lucky Morgan’s rag store in 
Cairn Edward. Work had been found for Tyke, and 
he had done many half days of labour in various gardens. 
Unfortunately, however, before the hour of noon, it was 
Tyke’s hard case to be taken with a ‘ grooin’ in his 
inside ’ of such a nature that he became rapidly incapa- 
citated for further work. 

‘ No, mem, I canna tak’ it. It’s mony a year since 
I saw the evil o’t. Ye’ll hae to excuse me, but I really 
couldna. Oh, thae pains ! O sirce, my inside ! Weel, 


200 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


gin ye insist, I’ll juist hae to try a toothfu’ to ob^eege 
ye, like/ 

But Tyke’s toothfu’s were over for this world, and 
his shortcomings were lying ijnder four feet of red 
mould. Half a dozen kindly folk who pitied his ‘ three 
loons and a lassie ’ gathered a few pounds and gave him 
a decent burial, not for his own sake, but in order that 
the four little scarecrows might have a decent start in 
life. It is the most fatal and indestructible of reproaches 
in the south of Scotland to have a father buried by the 
parish. 

The lassie was the eldest of the children. She was 
thirteen, and she hardly remembered what it was to 
have a mother or a new frock. But ever since she was 
eleven she had never had a dirty one. The smith’s wife 
had shown her how to wash, and she had learned from 
the teacher how to mend. ‘ Leeb ’ had appeared on 
the books of the school as Elizabeth M‘Lurg, and she 
had attended as often as she could — that is, as often 
as her father could not prevent her ; for Tyke, being 
an independent man, was down on the compulsory 
clause of the Education Act, and had more than once 
got thirty days for assaulting the School Board officer. 

When he found out that Leeb was attending school 
at the village, he lay in wait for her on her return, with 
a stick, and after administering chastisement on general 
principles, he went on to specify his daughters iniquities : 

‘Ye upsettin’ blastie, wad ye be for gangin’ to their 
schule, learnin’ to look doon on yer ain faither that has 
been at sic pains to rear ye ’ — (a pause for further 
correction, to which poor Leeb vocalised an accompani- 





the LOCIISIDE by M'LURG’s ]\IILI 
















ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


203 


ment). * Let me see gin ye can read ! Hae, read that ! ’ 
he said, flinging a tattered lesson book, which the teacher 
had given her, to his daughter. Leeb opened the book, 
and, punctuating the lesson with her sobs, she read in the 
high and level shriek of a locomotive engine, ‘ And so 
brave Bobby, hav-ing sa-ved the tr-r-r-em-bling child, re- 
turn-ed with the res-cu-ed one in his mouth to the shore.' 

‘ Davert ! but ye can read ! ' said her father, snatching 
the book and tearing it up before her eyes. ‘ Noo, 
listen ; Til hae nane o’ my bairns teached to despise 
their faither by no Schule Boards. Look you here, 
Leeb M‘Lurg, gin ever I catch you within a mile o’ the 
schule. I’ll skin ye ! ’ 

But for all this tremendous threat, or maybe all the 
more because of it, and also because she so much desired 
to be able to do a white seam, Leeb so arranged it that 
there were few days when she did not manage to come 
along the mile and half of lochside road which separated 
her from the little one- roomed, whitewashed school- 
house on the face of the brae. She even brought one 
of the Moons’ with her pretty often ; but as Jock, Rab, 
and Benny (otherwise known as Rag, Tag, and Bobtail) 
got a little older, they more easily accommodated them- 
selves to the wishes of their parent ; and, in spite of 
Leeb’s blandishments, they went into ‘ hidie holes ’ till 
the School Board offlcer had passed by. 

M‘Lurg’s Mill, where the children lived, was a 
tumbledown erection, beautiful for situation, set on the 
side of the long loch of Kenick. The house had once 
been a little farmhouse, its windows brilliant with 
geraniums and verbenas ; but in the latter days of the 


204 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


forlorn M‘Lurgs it had become betrampled as to its 
doorsteps by lean swine, and bespattered as to its 
broken floor by intrusive hens. It was to M‘Lurg’s 
Mill that the children returned after the funeral. Leeb 
had been arrayed in the hat and dress of a neighbour's 
daughter for the occasion, but the three loons had 
played ‘ tig ' in the intervals of watching their father's 
funeral from the broomy knoll behind the mill. Jock, 
the eldest, was nearly eleven, and had been taken in 
hand by the kind neighbour wife at the same time as 
Leeb. At one time he looked as though he would 
even better repay attention, for he feigned a sleek-faced 
submission and a ready compliance which put Mistress 
Auld of the Arkland off her guard. Then as soon as 
his sister, of whom Jock stood most in awe, was gone 
out, he snatched up his ragged clothes and fled to the 
hill. Here he was immediately joined by the other 
two loons. They caught the Arkland donkey grazing 
in the field beside the mill dam, and having made a 
parcel of the good black trousers and jacket, they tied 
them to the donkey and drove him homeward with 
blows and shoutings. A funeral was only a dull pro- 
cession to them, and the fact that it was their father’s 
made no difference. 

Next morning Leeb sat down on the ‘ stoop ' or 
wooden bench by the door, and proceeded to cast up 
her position. Her assets were not difficult to reckon. 
A house of two rooms, one devoted to hens and 
lumber ; a mill which had once sawn good timber, but 
whose great circular saw had stood still for many 
months ; a mill-lade broken down in several places, 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


205 


three or four chairs and a stool, a table, and a wash- 
tub. When she got so far she paused. It was evident 
that there could be no more school for her, and the 
thought struck her that now she must take the 
responsibility for the boys, and bring them up to be 
useful and diligent. She did not and could not so 
express her resolve to herself, but a still and strong 
determination was in her sore little heart not to let the 
boys grow up like their father. 

Leeb had gone to Sabbath school every week, when 
she could escape from the tyranny of home, and was, 
therefore, well known to the minister, who had often 
exercised himself in vain on the thick defensive armour 
of ignorance and stupidity which encompassed the 
elder M‘Lurg. His office-bearers and he had often 
bemoaned the sad example of this ne’er-do-weel family 
which had entrenched itself in the midst of so many 
well-doing people. M‘Lurg’s Mill was a reproach and 
an eyesore to the whole parish, and the M‘Lurg 
‘ weans ’ a gratuitous insult to every self-respecting 
mother within miles. For three miles round the 
children were forbidden to play with, or even to speak 
to, the four outcasts at the mill. Consequently their 
society was much sought after. 

When Leeb came to set forth her resources, she 
could not think of any except the four-pound loaf, the 
dozen hens and a cock, the routing wild Indian of a 
pig, and the two lean and knobby cows on the hill at 
the back. It would have been possible to have sold 
all these things, perhaps, but Leeb looked upon herself 
as trustee for the rest of the family. She resolved, 


2o6 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


therefore, to make what use of them she could, and 
having most of the property under her eye at the time, 
there was the less need to indite an inventory of it. 

But, first, she must bring her brothers to a sense of 
their position. She was a very Napoleon of thirteen, and 
she knew that now that there was no counter-authority 
to her own, she could bring Jock, Rob, and Benny to 
their senses very quickly. She therefore selected with 
some care and attention a hazel stick, using a broken 
table-knife to cut it with a great deal of deftness. 
Having trimmed it, she went out to the hill to look for 
her brothers. It was not long before she came upon 
them engaged in the fascinating amusement of rooting 
for pignuts in a green bankside. The natural Leeb 
would instantly have thrown down her wand of office 
and joined them in the search, but the Leeb of to-day 
was a very different person. Her second thought was 
to rush among them and deal lusty blows with the 
stick, but she fortunately remembered that in that case 
they would scatter, and that by force she could only 
take home one or at most two. She therefore called 
to her assistance the natural guile of her sex, 

‘ Boys, are ye hungry ? ’ she said. ‘ There’s sic a 
graun’ big loaf come frae the Arkland ! ’ By this 
time all her audience were on their feet. ‘ An’ I’ll milk 
the kye, an’ we’ll hae a feast.’ 

‘Come on, Jock,’ said Rab, the second loon, and 
the leader in mischief, ‘ I’ll race ye for the loaf.’ 

‘ Ye needna do that,’ said Leeb, calmly ; ‘ the 

door’s lockit.* 

So as Leeb went along she talked to her brothers as 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


207 


soberly as though they were models of good behaviour 
and all the virtues, telling them what she was going to 
do, and how she would expect them to help her. By 
the time she got them into the mill yard, she had 
succeeded in stirring their enthusiasm, especially that 
of Jock, to w'hom with a natural tact she gave the 
wand of the office of ‘ sairgint,’ a rank which, on the 
authority of Sergeant M‘Millan, the village pensioner, 
was understood to be very much higher than that of 
general. ‘ Sairgint ’ Jock foresaw much future interest 
in the disciplining of his brothers, and entered with 
eagerness into the new ploy. The out-of-doors live 
stock was also committed to his care. He was to 
drive the cows along the roadside and allow them to 
pasture on the sweetest and most succulent grasses, 
while Rab scouted in the direction of the village for 
supposititious ‘ poalismen ^ who were understood to take 
up and sell for the Queen’s benefit all cows found 
eating grass on the public highway. Immediately 
after Jock and Rab had received a hunch of the 
Arkland loaf and their covenanted drink of milk, they 
went off to drive the cows to the loch road, so that 
they might at once begin to fill up their lean sides. 
Benny, the youngest, who was eight past, she reserved 
for her own assistant. He was a somewhat tearful but 
willing little fellow, whose voice haunted the precincts 
of M‘Lurg’s mill like a wistful ghost. His brothers 
were constantly running away from him, and he patter- 
ing after them as fast as his fat little legs could carry 
him, roaring with open mouth at their cruelty, the 
tears making clean watercourses down his grimy 


2o8 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


cheeks. But Benny soon became a new boy under his 
sister’s exclusive care. 

‘ Noo, Benny,’ she said, ‘ you an’ me’s gaun to clean 
the hoose. Jock an’ Rab will no’ be kennin’ it when 
they come back ! ’ So, having filled the tub with 
water from the mill-lade, and carried every movable 
article of furniture outside, Leeb began to wash out 
the house and rid it of the accumulated dirt of years. 
Benny carried small bucketfuls of water to swill over 
the floor. Gradually the true colour of the stones 
began to shine up, and the black incrustation to 
retreat towards the outlying corners. 

‘ I’m gaun doon to the village,’ she said abruptly. 
‘ Benny, you keep scrubbin’ alang the wa’s.’ 

Leeb took her way down rapidly to where Joe Turner, 
the village mason, was standing by a newly begun pig- 
stye or swine-ree, stirring a heap of lime and sand. 

‘ G’ye way oot o’ that ! ’ he said instantly, with the 
threatening gesture which every villager except the 
minister and the mistress of Arkland instinctively made 
on seeing a M‘Lurg. This it is to have a bad name. 

But Leeb stood her ground, strong in the conscious- 
ness of her good intentions. 

‘ Maister Turner,’ she said, ‘could ye let me hae a 
bucketfu’ or twa o’ whitewash for the mill kitchen, an* 
I’ll pey ye in hen’s eggs. Oor hens are layin’ fine, an’ 
your mistress is fond o’ an egg in the mornin’.’ 

Joe stopped and scratched his head. This was 
something new, even in a village where a good deal of 
business is done according to the rules of truck or 
barter. 



1,1‘LURG’S mill 










ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


2II 


* What are ye gaun to do wi’ the whitewash ? ^ he 
inquired, to get time to think. ‘ There was little white- 
wash in use about M‘Lurg’s Mill in yer faither’s time ! ’ 

‘ But Fm gaun to bring up the boys as they should,’ 
said Leeb, with some natural importance, sketching 
triangles on the ground with her bare toe. 

‘ An’ what’s whitewash got to do wi’ that ? ’ asked 
Joe, with some asperity. 

Leeb could not just put the matter into words, but 
she instinctively felt that it had a good deal to do with 
it. Whitewash was her badge of respectability both 
inside the house and out, in which Leeb was at one 
with modern science. 

^ Fll gie three dizzen o’ eggs for three bucketfu’s,’ she 
said. 

‘ An’ hoo div I ken that Fll ever see ane o’ the eggs?’ 
asked Joe. 

‘ Fve brocht a dizzen wi’ me noo ! ’ said Leeb, 
promptly producing them from under her apron. 

Leeb got the whitewash that very night and the 
loan of a brush to put it on with. Next morning the 
farmer of the Crae received a shock. There was some- 
thing large and white down on the lochside, where ever 
since he came to the Crae he had seen nothing but 
the trees which hid M‘Lurg’s mill. 

^ I misdoot it’s gaun to be terrible weather. I never 
saw that hoose o’ Tyke M‘Lurg’s aff our hill afore ! ’ he 
said. 

The minister came by that day and stood perfectly 
aghast at the new splendours of the M‘Lurg mansion. 
Hitherto when, he had strangers staying with him, he 

P 


212 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


took them another way, in order that his parish might 
not be disgraced. Not only were the walls of the 
house shining with whitewash, but the windows were 
cleaned, a piece of white muslin curtain was pinned 
across each, and a jug with a bunch of heather and 
wild flowers looked out smiling on the passers-by. 
The minister bent his steps to the open door. He 
could see the two M‘Lurg cows pasturing placidly with 
much contented head-tossing on the roadside, while a 
small boy sat above labouring at the first rounds of a 
stocking. From the house came the shrill voice of 
singing. Out of the fir-wood over the knoll came a 
still smaller boy bent double with a load of sticks. 

In the window, written with large sprawling capitals 
on a leaf of a copy-book under the heading ‘ Encourage 
Earnest Endeavour,’ appeared the striking legend : 


SOWING & MENDING DUN 
GOOD COWS MILK 

STICKS FOR FIREWOOD CHEEP 
NEW LAID EGGS 

BY ELIZABETH MC LURG 


The minister stood regarding, amazement on every line 
of his face. Leeb came out singing, a neatly tied 
bundle of chips made out of the dry debris of the saw- 
mill in her hand. 

‘ Elizabeth/ said he, ‘ what is the meaning of this ? * 


ENSAMPLES TO THE FLOCK 


213 


^ Will ye be pleased to step ben ? ^ said Leeb. The 
minister did so, and was astonished to find himself 
sitting down in a spotless kitchen, the walls positively 
painfully white, the wooden chairs scoured with sand 
till the very fibre of the wood was blanched, and on a 
floor, so clean that one might have dined off it, the 
mystic whorls and crosses of whiting which connect all 
good Galloway housekeepers with Runic times. 

Before the minister went out of M^Lurg’s Mill he 
had learned the intentions of Leeb to make men of her 
brothers. He said : 

‘You are a woman already, before your time, 
Elizabeth ! ^ which was the speech of all others best 
fitted to please Leeb M‘Lurg. He also ordered milk 
and eggs for the manse to be delivered by Benny, and 
promised that his wife should call upon the little head 
of the house. 

As he went down the road by the lochside he 
meditated, and this was the substance of his thought : 
‘ If that girl brings up her brothers like herself. Tyke 
M‘Lurg’s children may yet be ensamples to the flock.* 

But as to this we shall see. 


THE SIEGE OF M‘LURG’S MILL 

Elizabeth M‘Lurg had been over at the village for 
her groceries. Dressed in her best — clean pinafored, 
white sun-bonneted — she was a comely picture. Half 
a dozen years had made a difference in the coltish lassie 
who had dragooned her three loons of brothers into 
decency and school attendance after her father’s funeral. 
There was now not a better-doing family in the parish 
than that over which the rule of Leeb M^Lurg had the 
unquestioned force of an autocracy. Leeb had saved 
enough from her cows and poultry to employ Sanny 
MacQuhatt, the travelling millwright, to put the old 
sawmill in order against that approaching day when 
John M‘Lurg, her eldest brother, would be out of his 
time at the shop of Rob Johnstone, joiner and cartwright 
in Whunnyliggate. Affairs had marched well with the 
M‘Lurgs. Rob, the second, was still at school, but 
there was word of his getting into a Cairn Edward bank ; 
and it was the desire of Leeb’s life to see her favourite 
Benny turned into a dominie. She had already spoken 
to the minister about having him made a pupil-teacher 
at the next vacancy. 

Elizabeth had a word for every one as she walked 




LKEB COES MARKETING TO THE VIELACE 














THE SIEGE OF M‘LURG’S MILL 


217 


sedately up the narrow unpaved street — modest for the 
minister, shy for young Will Morton, the teacher of 
the village school where her brothers stood alternately 
at the head of the highest class in sharp fraternal 
emulation — no other pupil coming within a mile of 
them ; straightforward with the women folk, who came 
to their doors to look down the street every ten 
minutes or so on the chance of seeing a cadger, or 
even a red farm cart, whose clanking passage might 
break the soundless monotony. 

The village lads would also cry, ‘ Hoo’s a’ wi’ ye 
the day, Leeb ? ’ in an offhand way which did not 
conceal from that sharp-eyed young woman their desire 
to stand well with her. 

‘ She’s the only lass i’ the parish that kens hoo to 
lift her feet aff the grund,’ said Saunders Paterson to 
Rab Affleck, as they watched Leeb’s progress up the 
street. 

‘ Ay, man, ye’re richt ; there’s nae glaur’ll stick 
to Leeb’s coat-tail.’ 

But this morning many came to look after Leeb 
M‘Lurg of M‘Lurg’s Mill who had hitherto paid small 
attention to her comings and goings. For it was the 
village talk that Timothy M‘Lurg, Tyke M‘Lurg’s 
younger brother, otherwise known as ‘Tim the Tairger,’ 
had come back, and had been seen and heard in the 
skirts of the public-house declaring that he had come 
as trustee of his brother to take possession of M‘Lurg’s 
Mill, its cattle and sheep, house gear and bestial, and 
to administer the same for the behoof of the children 
of the departed. It was a noble ambition, and when 


2i8 


THE SIEGE OF M‘LURG’S MILL 


declared among the choice company assembled at the 
‘ public/ it elicited warm commendations there, for 
Timothy M‘Lurg had always spent other people’s 
money like a man. 

But when the better spirits of the village heard of 
it, there were many who grieved for the children who 
had made so gallant a fight. So when Elizabeth 
M‘Lurg went up the street that day, there was many 
a one who watched her with a wae heart. Yet it was 
not until David Clark, the village shopkeeper, had 
finished serving her with tea and sugar that he said to 
Leeb, in a friendly way : 

‘ I hear ye’ve gotten your Uncle Timothy back/ 

Leeb whitened to the lips at that name of dread, 
She remembered the wild nights when Timothy 
brought his companions with him, and turned the little 
world of M‘Lurg’s Mill upside down. 

‘ No/ she answered, determined not to show any 
emotion to the watchful eyes of David Clark, ‘ I didna 
ken.’ 

She spoke as though the news were some ordinary 
and unimportant gossip. 

‘ Where has he come frae ? ’ she asked. 

David Clark knew that he had come from a long 
sojourn in her Majesty’s prisons, owing to the death of 
a keeper in one of Tim’s poaching affrays. But David 
was not a man to commit himself unnecessarily when a 
well-paying customer was concerned. 

^ They were sayin’ that he was up aboot the public, 
an’ that he cam’ frae Cairn Edward in the bottom o’ a 
coal cairt.’ 


THE SIEGE OF M'LUHG’S MILL 


219 


Calmly Leeb settled her reckoning with the eggs 
and butter which she had brought, and received the 
balance in good Queen’s silver. Calmly she took her 
sedate way down the street, no step discomposed or 
hurried. But in her heart there was a deadly tumult. 

Her scheme of life, so carefully constructed and so 
sturdily worked for, came tumbling about her ears. 
She had no idea what her uncle’s powers might be — 
whether he could take the mill or claim the cows. 
She only knew that he would certainly do aU the ill 
he was capable of, and she thought of her fortress lying 
open and unguarded at her enemy’s mercy, with only 
old Sanny MacQuhatt hammering and grumbling to 
himself over the reconstruction of the rickety sawmill. 
As soon as she was clear of the village Leeb took to 
her heels, and glinted light foot through the poplar 
avenues along the skirts of the bright June meadows, 
where the hemlock was not yet overtopped by the 
meadow-sweet, as in a week or two it would be. 

She struck across the hill above the loch, which 
lay below her rippleless and azure as the blue of a jay’s 
wing. The air from off the heather was warm and 
honey-scented. At the second stile, when she turned 
into her own hill pasture, some vague fear struck her 
heart. She dared not take the first look at the home- 
stead which she had given her young life to make 
worthy of her vow to bring up her brothers as they 
should. As she set her foot on the lowest stone of the 
high, uncouth stile in the dry-stone dyke, something 
grunted heavily on the other side. 

So bestially human and superfluously degraded 


220 


THE SIEGE OF M‘LURG’S MILL 


was the noise that Lceb knew that it could not be 
produced by any of the ‘ lower ’ animals. Gather- 
ing her skirts about her for a spring, and turning 
up a supercilious nose, she peeped over the top 
stone of the dyke. Beneath her lay Tim M‘Lurg, 
sleeping stertorously, with his head recumbent on the 
lowest step, by which she must descend. A swarm of 
flies buzzed and crawled over his face, unhealthily 
flushed through its prison sallowness by drink and the 
June sun. 

Lceb, whose tastes were dainty as those of any 
other lady, glanced at him with such extreme disfavour 
that her fear was for the time being swallowed up in 
disgust. She paused for half a dozen long moments, 
finally reached down an experimental toe, and with a 
sharp side push on the close-cropped head she undid 
the precarious balance of her relative, who collapsed 
flaccidly sideways on the heather like an overset 
bolster. 

His niece sprang over his prostrate hulk, took two 
or three rapid steps, faced about, and gazed fixedly at 
him, to show that she was not in the least afraid. Then 
she walked slowly up the path to the crest of the hill, 
where she was out of sight of the stile ; when, with 
heart beating wildly, her terror came upon her, and she 
ran as hard as she could towards M‘Lurg’s Mill, which 
lay peacefully among the trees at the foot of the hill. 

As she came down the woodside she caught up the 
tough branch of a fir tree, and drove the two cows, 
now no longer lean and ill-favoured, and the young 
bull, to which Leeb had been looking to pay her rent 


THE SIEGE OF M'LURG’S MILL 


221 


that year, towards the byre. She sent Jock and his 
mother on with vicious blows till they were safely 
stabled in their stalls, with fresh bundles of clover grass 
before them. Then Leeb locked the byre door with a 
ponderous seldom-used key, and went down to the 
Mill to warn Sanny MacQuhatt. 

‘ Ay, an’ yer uncle’s come hame,’ muttered Sanny. 

‘ That’s no’ sae guid ; an ill yin him a’ the days o’ him. 
Tim the Tairger they ca’ him — no’ withoot raison. 
Ay, ay, an ill yin Tim.’ 

‘You’ll no’ let him within the Mill, wull ye, Sanny?’ 

‘ Certes, he’ll no’ come here as long as I’m respon- 
sible for pittin’ the auld ramshackle concern in order — 
mair fule me for takin’ on the job. It’s never worth it ; 
guid for nocht but firewood.’ 

And Sanny grumbled away till his words were lost 
in the snuffling produced by repeated pinches of brown 
Taddy from his waistcoat pocket. Leeb stood patient 
by, knowing that at this juncture the word of Sanny 
MacQuhatt, ill-tempered old curmudgeon of a mill- 
wright though he might be, was to her a tower of 
strength. 

The cattle put under lock and key, the Mill 
garrisoned, Leeb proceeded to the house, where she 
carefully locked every door and put the hasp on every 
window. Those which had no defence of this kind she 
secured with nails. While she was still employed 
about this last operation there came a loud knock at 
the front door, which Leeb had secured first of all. 

‘ Wha’s there ? ’ challenged the besieged, sharp and 
clear. 


222 


THE SIEGE OF M^LURG’S MILL 


‘ Open the door, Leeb,’ returned a thick voice, which 
Leeb knew instinctively to be that of her uncle. ‘ It’s 
me come hame.’ 

‘ I ken naebody that’s to come hame,’ returned 
Leeb. ‘ Wha micht “ me ” be ? ’ 

‘D’ye no’ mind yer Uncle Timothy?’ said the thick 
voice outside, subsiding into a whine. ‘ Let me come 
ben, Leeb ; I’m corned to look efter ye, an’ to work for 
ye a’.’ 

‘ Na,’ said Leeb ; ‘ I’ve worked for mysel’ a’ thae 
years that ye’ve been lyin’ in the gaol, a disgrace to 
us, and I’m no’ gaun to let ye scatter what I hae 
gathered, sae just e’en tak’ yersel’ aff to where ye cam’ 
frae. This is nae hame o’ yours.^ 

The wrath of the still half-tipsy man rose in a flash. 
His voice became an unsteady scream. 

‘ Then tak’ heed to yersel’, Leeb M‘Lurg ! ’ he 
shouted through the keyhole. ‘ Gin ye dinna let me 
in I’ll burn the riggin’ ower yer heid — the Mill first 
and then the hoose — ye ill-set, ungratefu’ besom ! ’ 

‘ Ay, Uncle Timothy, ye can try either o’ the twa,’ 
said Leeb, from the safe vantage of a little staircase 
window, which, made of a single pane, opened in- 
wards. ‘ Gae ’wa’ frae my door this minute,’ she 
said. 

The gaol-bird beneath threw himself furiously 
against the old wooden door, which opened in the 
middle ; but the oak bolt was firm, and held. Still, 
the whole house shook with the shock of his on- 
slaught. 

Leeb hesitated no longer, but snatched a black 


THE SIEGE OF M^LURG’S MILL 223 

‘ goblet ’ from the side of the kitchen fire, and sent the 
contents out of the window with a deft hand. There 
was an answering howl of pain. 

‘YeVe scadded me! I’ll hae the law on ye, ye 
randy 1 I’ll hae yer life ! ’ 

‘ There’s a potfu’ mair on the fire for ye, gin ye 
dinna gang awa’ quaitly wi’ what ye hae gotten 1 ^ said 
Tim M‘Lurg’s hard-hearted niece. 

He now took himself off in the direction of the 
barn. Hardly had he disappeared on the other side 
when Leeb’s favourite brother, Benny, came whistling 
round the corner opposite to that at which Tim had 
disappeared. He stood astonished to see the front 
door shut. Leeb hurried down, unlocked the door, 
and called to him to run. He came slowly towards 
her with a bewildered countenance. She pulled him 
inside, told him hurriedly what had happened, and sent 
him off through the back window, which abutted on 
the moor, with a message to Will Morton, the school- 
master. Benny flew like the wind. He knew that it 
was his part to bring up reinforcements while his sister 
kept the castle. Leeb watched till Benny was safe 
over the hill, then she herself slipped out of the house, 
locking the door behind her, and went towards the 
Mill, from which rose the sound of angry voices. 
Before she got there, however, the commotion was 
evidently reaching its climax, and Leeb deemed it best 
to slip into the byre, through one of the wickets of 
which she could see the Mill door. Through that 
wide-open square tumbled Tim the Tairger, bareheaded 
and in disarray, and behind him appeared the burly 


224 


THE SIEGE OF M^LURG’S MILL 


figure of old Sanny MacQuhatt, with his millwright- 
ing mallet in his hand. 

‘ I wad be wae to strike the like o’ you, Tim,’ said 
the old man. ‘Ye michtna need anither, but dinna ye 
come back here to interfere wi’ my wark. Gang awa’ 
an’ collogue wi’ yer cronies, poachers an’ sic-like, an’ 
lea’ decent folk abee ! ’ 

Timothy gathered himself up. He had had enough 
of the millwright, who, having done his part, went 
staidly back to his interrupted work. The ill-treated 
one came towards the byre, and, seeing the door open, 
he went in. Leeb sprang into the bauks above the 
stall of the bull just in time. Her uncle looked the 
cattle over with a dissatisfied eye. He seemed to Leeb 
to be reckoning how much Crummie and Specklie would 
bring in the auction mart. She resolved that he should 
also have a look at Jock, and so be able to decide on 
his market value as well. Stooping over, she undid his 
binding, and lashed him at the same time sharply across 
the nose with the rope. Jock lowered his head, and 
backed indignantly out of his stall. As he turned he 
found himself face to face with an intruder, a man 
whose red neckcloth proved him evidently his enemy 
and assailant. Jock’s charge was instant and effective. 
With a snort he cleared the byre, and pursued across 
the open square of the yard, tail in air and horns to 
the ground. Timothy M‘Lurg could not complain of 
the warmth of his reception in the home of his 
ancestors. 

He sought refuge from the bull in the big water hole 
under the mill-wheel. Here, waiting the bull’s retire- 


THE SIEGE OF M'LURG’S MILL 


225 


ment, Leeb interviewed him from the Mill window, 
under the protection of Sanny MacQuhatt, and offered 
him a pound note to go away. This compromise had 
the weakness of a woman’s compunction, and was 
strongly disapproved of by her ally. 

‘ Gie that craitur a poun’ to drink — he’ll sune come 
back on ye for anither,’ said Sanny, who knew the breed. 
‘ I wad “ pound ” him,’ he muttered. 

But Tim the Tairger, also thinking that this offer 
gave signs of yielding, rejected it with oaths and con- 
tumely. On the contrary, he would sell them up, bag 
and baggage. The whole place belonged to him. He 
had deeds that could prove it. Stock, plenishing, 
water-power — all were his. 

‘ Gin the water-poo’er be yours, ma man,’ said Sanny, 
‘ ye can hae that, an’ welcome.’ 

Sanny’s humour was of the entirely practical kind. 

He went to the mill-lade, and turned on the stream. 
The whole force of M‘Lurg’s mill-dam took its way 
smoothly down the repaired lade, and flashed with a 
solid leap over the old green wheel upon Timothy, as 
he stood between the bull to landward and the plunging 
mill-wheel. Sanny grimly kept up his end of the jest. 

‘ Hae, ma man, ye’ll no’ say that we keepit ye oot 
o’ yer richts. “ Water-poo’er,” ’ quo’ he; ‘ nae pound 
notes ye’se get i’ this pairish, but it’ll no’ be Sanny 
MacQuhatt that’ll keep ye oot o’ the use o’ yer ain 
water-poo’er.’ 

Tim the Tairger was in a woeful case. The old 
man looked from the Mill window, and comforted him 
with crusty humour, the points of which were all too 


226 


THE SIEGE OF M‘LURG’S MILL 


obvious. The cold water plunged upon him from the 
mill-wheel, it deepened about his knees, and Jock, the 
young bull, pawed the ground and snorted murderously 
for his blood. He wa§ completely sobered now, and 



TIMOTHY M'LURG IS NOT REFUSED HIS OWN WATER-POWER 

c 

vowed repeatedly that if they would only give him the 
pound note he would go and never disturb them more. 

But Sanny had taken things Into his own hands, 
and would not allow Leeb to interfere. 

‘ Bide ye where ye are, ma man ; ye’re braw and 
caller doon there. Ye were aye a drouthy lad, Tim, 
since ever I kenned ye. Ye’re in the way o’ being 
slockened noo ! An’ In a wee there’ll be a bonny lad 


THE SIEGE OF M'LURG’S MILL 


227 


wi’ silver buttons cornin’ up that road to look for ye. 
Benny, yer ain bluid relative, he’s gane for him, an’ he’ll 
hae him here the noo. It was a blessin’ he was in the 
daistrict onyway ; it’s no’ that often a polisman’s where 
he’s wantit.’ 

‘ Here he comes,’ cried Leeb, from her post of 
observation in the Mill gable. 

Tim the Tairger took one look down the road, a single 
link of which he could see as it wound round the loch. 
He saw the sun glitter on the white buttons of a police- 
man’s coat, who came stalking majestically along. 
Whatever evil Tim had on his conscience of prison- 
breaking or ticket-of-leave unreported we do not know, 
but the terror of the officer of the law overpowered even 
his fear of Jock’s horns. With a wild skelloch of 
desperation he dashed out of the pool, and took down 
the road, doubling from the bull like a hunted hare. 

The schoolmaster — masquerading, according to 
Leeb’s orders, in Sergeant Macmillan’s old policeman’s 
coat — saw Timothy M‘Lurg leap the low loaning dyke 
and tear down the road. After him thundered the bull, 
routing in blood-curdling wrath. From a high knoll 
he watched the chase, till hunter and hunted were lost 
in the shades of Knockangry Wood. The bull was 
found next day wandering near Dairy, with a clouted 
deer-stalking cap transfixed on one horn ; but as for 
Tim the Tairger, he was never more heard tell of in 
Stewartry or in Shire. 

The mystery is not likely to be solved now, for the 
secrets of that chase are only known to Jock, and he 
ran his earthly race to the beef-tub half a dozen years 

Q 


228 


THE SIEGE OF M‘LURG’S MILL 


ago without unburdening his conscience to any. From 
his uncertain temper it is, however, suspected that he 
had something on his mind. 

As for Sanny MacQuhatt, he says that he is ‘ muckle 
feared that Tim the Tairger is gane whaur he wad be 
michty gled o’ the water-poo’er o’ M‘Lurg’s mill-lade — 
whilk/ concludes Sanny, ‘ I defy him to say that I ever 
denied him.’ 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR CASTS OUT 
WITH HIS MAKER 


ILAS CARTWRIGHT had a quarrel 
with the Almighty. He had dwelt 
five years by the side of the Scaur 
Water. He was a lonely man and 
little given to going into company. 
The men of his presbytery found it 
hard to draw him away from his 
manse even for a night. He asked 
none of them to assist him at his 
Communion seasons except Mr. Ure 
of Craw wheats and Mr. Croft of the 
Riggs, both of whom could go back 
to their manses the same night. 

The manse of the Scaur sat on a high bank over- 
looking the long, narrow, densely-wooded valley. From 
his study window the minister could look over the 
clustered slate roofs of the village of Scaur into the 
pale-blue misty distance, through which a silver thread 
ran — Silas Cartwright’s glimpse of that other world 
where the Nith glimmered among its rich wheat-fields. 
Above the manse of Scaur the woods died out into 



230 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


fringing hazel and birch, and the brown moorland began 
where the whaups and the peewits made a blithe crying 
on the June mornings, and the jacksnipe swooped side- 
long with melancholy wing-quaverings every autumn 
evening. 

It was to the bare hills of heather that Silas Cart- 
wright took his way every time that he undid the hasp 
of the creaking front door of the manse which was so 
seldom used. He dwelt among his hill folk like a man 
of another blood and another speech. City bred and 
delicately nurtured, he had come to the parish of Scaur 
in the last days of patronage, through the interest of a 
university friend who happened to be the penniless laird 
of a barren heritage of bog and morass. 

‘You tak’ the lairdship, an’ I’ll tak’ the steepend ! ’ 
his friend had said. 

But Silas Cartwright had stuck to the manse. He 
had a great desire in his heart to be a leader among 
men, and the chance which opened to him among the 
shepherds and small sheep farmers of the Scaur Water 
was peculiarly fascinating. Likewise there was a girl 
with a pale cheek and shining gold hair for whom 
the minister dreamed of making a home. He had 
met Cecilia Barton in Edinburgh drawing-rooms, where 
her pale beauty and crown of glistening tresses had 
lain heavy on his heart for many days after. Then 
they had met again by the side of the Eastern sea, 
where the rocky islands stood out in the morning like 
dusky amethysts against the sun. He had paced the 
sands with her, overtowering her slim form with his 
masculine stolidity. Cecilia Barton listened with a far- 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


231 


off sympathy while the tall student quoted Tennyson 
to her, and even thrilled with a faint emotion as the 
tones of his voice proclaimed more plainly than words 
that she, she only, was the power 

Whose slightest whisper moved him more 
Than all the ranged reasons of the world.’ 

This girl with the far-off eyes had trod, careless but 
not unconscious, on many hearts, and the virginal 
whiteness of her summer dress was more passionate 
than the heart which beat beneath it. 

Silas Cartwright, as he walked on the moorland 
with his staff in his hand, thought often of the days 
when Tantallon’s toothless portcullis was a gateway to 
the palace of delights, and when Fidra and the small 
isles swam on a sea of bliss. All this because there 
was a tolerant kindness in a girl’s languid eyes, and 
because the glamour of a first love had fallen upon a 
young man. Then it was that Cecilia Barton had 
expressed her fondness for a life of pastoral quietness, 
simple among a simple people. This was her ideal, 
she said, her desire above all others. Her voice was 
soft ; her eyes luminous. Her mother would have 
smiled had she heard her, but Cecilia Barton did not 
talk thus to her mother. Really her ideals lay in the 
region of C-springed carriages and dressing-cases with 
fittings of monogramed gold. 

When Silas Cartwright went back to his city home 
that autumn, he treasured some words which in the 
silent coolness of a rocky recess this girl’s voice had 
said to him. Indeed, they were more to him than the 
call of the Master whom he had promised to serve. 


232 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


He took her hand in his, and she let it lie. He 
saw strange meanings in her eyes as they looked out 
to sea. Really she was only wondering what he would 
do next. Men do not act alike in such cases and the 
uncertainty is pleasing. But Silas Cartwright, with 
small originality, only leaned towards the reflected light 
on the pale-gold hair. 

‘ Do you love me ? ’ he asked. 

After a pause Cecilia Barton answered him, ‘ There 
is no man I love so well.^ 

Which was true and hopeful so far, and might have 
been sufficient had there not been a girl whom she 
loved infinitely more. 

That last winter passed with presbyterial trials and 
class examinations to be overleaped, meaningless to him 
as so many hurdles in a handicap. License and ordina- 
tion he passed like milestones which marked his progress 
towards the white-walled manse in a sunny glen which 
should be a home for a new Adam and Eve. Then 
came Adam Stennis and his offer of the manse of the 
Scaur. The young minister preached there to a scanty 
flock who accepted him with unconcern. The Camero- 
nians were strong in that glen, and they looked on the 
new parish minister as an emblem of the powers of 
State which had refused to set up a Covenanted church. 
They came to the ordination, however, and sat silent 
with grim disapproval in every line of their faces. 
Then Silas Cartwright occupied himself in making a 
round of pastoral visitations, and in getting his furniture 
up from Thorniwood. He saw each article taken care- 
fully off the carts ; he unpacked it with his own hands, 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


233 


saying to himself, ‘ In this chair she will sit. At this 
table she will preside ! ^ His Sabbaths were chiefly 
delightful to him because of the vision of shining pale- 
gold hair which glimmered, unseen by all save the 
minister, in the gloomy square prison of the manse 
seat. Here he would open the Sunday school. Here 
at the little school’s lower end, beneath the windows 
round which the white roses clambered to peep in, the 
little cottage organ which he had bought for her would 
sit, and the thrill of her voice would shake the tendrils 
of the honeysuckle about the porch. 

One day the carrier brought the minister of the 
Scaur a parcel, and on the same day the postman 
brought him a newspaper. The latter was marked 
with a blue cross, and announced that the marriage of 
Perkins Dobbs and Cecilia Barton had been celebrated 
by the Rev. Dean Harkaway in the cathedral church of 
St. Kentigern. The bride had chosen the monograms 
and the C-springs. The country manse was a mere 
holiday opinion vanishing with Fidra and the grassy 
gateways of Tantallon. She whirled away amid smiles 
and rice, with the coat of arms of the paternal Dobbs 
(who in his day had brewed the best of ale) on the 
panels of her carriage, and there was an end of her. 

But what of the manse that was furnished for her, 
the chairs which, as they were bought, packed, trans- 
ported, and set up, were each consecrated to her down- 
sitting ? What of the man whose every breath was a 
spasm of pain, to whom sleep came with a feeling of 
deadliest oppression, and who awoke in the morning to 
a sharp and cruel stound of agony ? 


234 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


Silas Cartwright walked on the moorland by night 
and day. He did not think. He did not speak. He 
did not murmur. He only looked for God’s juniper 
bush, under which he might lie down and die. 


THE GRASSY GATEWAYS OF TANTALLON 

But a man cannot die naturally when he will, and 
Silas Cartwright had stronger stuff in him than those 
have who take away their own lives. 

The girl who had wronged him still lived with him 
a ghostly presence, and sat opposite him in the chairs 
which he had dreamed she would occupy. 



THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


235 


He saw her in the graceful quiet of her white gown 
on the little green lawn under the apple trees. In his 
dreams he took her hand and climbed the mountains 
with her, taking her far up into the bosom of the 
moors, where the high Lead Hills fold themselves in 
overlapping purple masses about the Pass of Dalveen. 

‘ This way madness lies ! ’ he would say time and 
again to himself, when like a dash of cold rain the 
reality of his loss came upon him ; but as his strange 
fancy strengthened, he walked with a ghostly bride 
and buried himself in an unreal present in order to 
shut out a hopeless future. 

His pulpit work alternated between severely ortho- 
dox disquisitions quarried from the literature of the 
past, over which every minister has mining rights, and 
strange, dreamy rhapsodies which considerably asto- 
nished his hearers in the little kirk of Scaur. 

Silas Cartwright had never been a deeply spiritual, 
man ; but now, steeped in a kind of mystic make- 
believe, he reached out towards all sorts of spiritualism 
and occultism. He had catalogues of books on these 
subjects sent to him, and from these he made extensive 
purchases, far beyond what his means allowed. He 
steeped his mind in these studies, and it was not long 
before his work as pastor among the hill folk became 
distasteful to him. His congregation of a Sunday — ■ 
droning psalms and fluttering leaves, sitting in strag- 
gling clusters about the pews, each looking more un- 
comfortable than his neighbour — moved before him like 
the idle painted shapes in a mummer's show. The only 
real figure in that gray kirk of rough harled masonry 


236 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


was the Presence with the shining hair sitting quiet on 
the cushions of the manse seat. 

The parish of Scaur did not let its tongue lie still 
while all this was going on. It had its own opinion, 
which was, plainly, that the minister was going out of 
his mind. But he was all the less to be meddled with 
on that account. He had even an increase of his 
Sabbath congregations, for it was a fascinating subject 
to discuss the strange utterances of a mad minister at 
farm ingle nooks, and by the smithy fire during the 
week. The Cameronians took little heed. It was 
small concern of theirs if an Erastian went wrong in 
his mind. He was far from right to begin with. So 
their minister simply kept leathering on at the funda- 
mentals. One of the things most noted was the care 
with which the minister of Scaur paraphrased the name 
of God in his prayers and discourses. The superstitious 
said that he dared not utter the Name. The bolder 
made bets that he would not do so in the whole course 
of a morning’s diet of worship ; and they won their 
wagers. It was, indeed, small wonder that the parish 
decided that its minister was going out of his mind. 

But the seasons went round, and the most that any 
one could say when asked about Mr. Cartwright was 
that he was ‘ No’ muckle waur than usual ! ’ He 
himself got little ease or peace of mind, and it was 
impossible that he should, considering the purpose 
which his mind confessed. This was no less than to 
take his revenge on God for denying him the desire 
of his heart. There was a kind of joy in the thought 
that he had cast out with his Maker. 


THE MINISTER OF SCAUR 


237 


What actually cured him it is strange to have to tell. 
When Cecilia Barton drove away that day behind the 
bays of Dobbs, she covenanted for a position and for 
riches. On the other hand, she had a husband whom 
she loved with such love that, when he died after five 
years, she put on widow’s weeds of the best quality 
and was exceeding thankful. Then she came down 
to a shooting-lodge in the Nith valley, and sent for 
Silas Cartwright to come to see her. He resisted the 
summons for some days, for his ideal bride had grown 
to suffice him, and then finally he went. He saw and 
he returned — a sane man whose cure was complete- 
He had seen a fat woman with two fatter lap-dogs, 
who talked concerning horses and sneered at the 
people of the shepherds’ houses about the mansion-house 
which she occupied. 

So Silas Cartwright returned, clothed and in his 
right mind. There was no presence in the manse seat 
any more. He made his peace with God in ways that 
are not our business. His sermons were new things — 
instinct with fervour. Some of the hill folk went over 
to the parish church to hear him one night when he 
held an evening service. An old elder walked to the 
manse gate with the young man. They two stood a 
moment silent, and then the elder spoke. 

‘ Maister Cartwright,’ he said, ‘ you and your Maker 
had an’ awfu’ cast oot : but noo that ye’ve made it up, 
man, ye’re maist fit to be a Cameronian ! * 


JOHN BLACK, CRITIC IN ORDINARY 

John Black was not a minister, but there were few 
ministers that could hold a candle to him. This is a 
fact. John Black says so himself. He desires to add 
‘ if any.^ But owing to jealousy he has somehow never 
been appreciated. But if John Black were to speak his 
mind, he ‘ kens o’ at least twal’ ministers that had better 
resign.’ Previous, however, to this holocaust we may 
endeavour to do some justice to John Black himself 
He came to our Sunday school trip this year, and his 
sayings and doings for a long summer’s day were within 
our observation. The result is appended hereunder, 
and may form a humble introduction to John’s intended 
series of essays in destructive criticism. 

First of all, John Black said that we were sure to 
get a bad day because we were going in the month of 
July. It is sure to rain in July. John had been a 
teacher in the school as long as he had a class, or, more 
accurately, as often as he could get his class to attend, 
for he used to disperse any class that was given to him 
in about three Sabbath days. The laddies said that 
‘ they werena cornin’ there to hae their lugs dadded.’ 
John said that ‘he never saw sic a set o’ young 


JOHN BLACK, CRITIC IN ORDINARY 239 

haythens and as for the superintendent, he said that ‘ he 
had something else to do than to rampage the country 
seeking for laddies to run away from John Black. If 
John wanted anymore classes he could seek them him- 
self.^ John felt that this was a discouragement, and 
resigned his position as an acting teacher in our con- 
gregational Sabbath school. But he retained, entirely 
by* his own appointment, a sort of honorary position 
as general critic to the management, and thought him- 
self more indispensable than the entire staff. This was 
not, however, we believe, the universal opinion. 

Last year we went up the country for our summer 
trip to a field on the farm of Greenshiels. John Black's 
auntie, who lived on the farm, had the supplying of the 
milk on that occasion, and, as everybody allowed, she 
just charged us two prices. John Black wanted us to 
go back to Greenshiels this year, but the minister had 
made arrangements with one of his elders to visit his 
farm of Port More, on the shores of the Firth. John 
Black was much distressed at the thought of all the 
children falling off the rocky ‘ heughs ' of Port More, 
and being brought home on a procession of shutters. 
Whereupon the minister said that in that case they had 
better take the shutters with them, for there were none 
within six miles of Port More. John told the minister 
that he would not have his responsibility for the best 
cow in the parish. But the minister thought he could 
take the responsibility without the cow. He is quite 
able for John Black at any time, is our minister. 

We were going in carts, for the reason that if we 
did not go in carts we should have had to walk. Indeed 


240 JOHN BLACK, CRITIC IN ORDINARY 

many did walk ; the younger teachers of both sexes in 
order to take the short cuts through the wood, and so 
save the horses — while many of the elder boys ranged 
on both sides of the road, like greyhounds fresh off the 
slip. The minister walked sedately behind all the carts 
along with the superintendent, seeing more than any 
one gave him credit for. 

There was not much cheering when we started, for 
but few people were about, and it is no use hurrahing 
if there is no one to hear you. The girls, for the most 
part, stayed quietly in their carts and sang hymns softly, 
with such of their teachers as, from age or other cause, 
had no call to rest the horses. There were some 
farmers’ sons driving the carts, very nice lads, though 
shy as a rule till they found their tongues — which they 
did not do in general until they were within a mile of 
their own homes, and could see the smoke from their 
ancestral chimneys. Then they became unexpectedly 
voluble, and displayed astonishing local knowledge for 
the benefit of the lady teachers. James Greg even 
asked the Misses Robb, whose father keeps the shop 
at the Bridge End, if they would not like to come and 
live at his house. This was felt to be a very great 
length for James to go, but then James was known in 
all the parish to be a very daring Romeo. But Nancy 
Robb soon brought him to confusion by replying: ‘We 
canna a’ three come, Jamie ; tell us what ane ye want, 
an’ then we’ll see aboot it ! ’ 

Nancy had been used to holding her own with the 
town lads, so James’s rustic gallantry was child’s play 
to her. Besides, she was going to be married in the 


JOHN BLACK, CRITIC IN ORDINARY 241 

back end, and so could speak more freely. No one is 
so dangerous as an engaged girl, not even a widow, 
though here the authorities are against us. The engaged 
girl is a licensed heart-breaker, certified capable, who 
knows that her time is short. 

When we got to Port More we all went to have a 
look at the tide, which was just coming in. Some of 
the boys were only restrained by the most forcible 
arguments from bathing there and then. The water was 
about four inches deep half a mile from the shore ; so, 
to make fun of them, the minister advised them to walk 
out with their clothes on, and strip when they got into 
deep water ; but none of them did that. 

We were just all seated in a great irregular semi- 
circle, having milk and buns, when John Black drove 
up in his auntie’s gig, which he had borrowed for the 
occasion. He had not been asked, but that did not 
prevent him from finding fault with all the arrange- 
ments as soon as he arrived. Milk, it appeared, was 
bad for the stomach when over-heated, and ought to 
have had its acidity corrected, according to his auntie’s 
recipe, with a little water. 

‘ We want nane of yer milk frae the coo wi’ the 
iron tail, John,’ said one of the teachers, who did not 
like John, and had said that he would not come if 
John was asked. 

The children did not seem to feel any bad effects, 
however, nor did they quarrel with the want of the 
corrective water, judging by the milk they stowed 
away about their persons. In a few minutes, after 
sundry cautions from the minister not to go along the 


242 JOHN BLACK, CRITIC IN ORDINARY 

shore without a teacher, they scattered into small 
roving bands. The cricket stumps were soon up, and 
a good game going. One of the teachers took the 
biggest boys to bathe in a sheltered cove at some 
distance, where the tide had come sufficiently far up. 
The lady teachers wandered about and picked rock 
rose and other seaside flowers, or explored with their 
classes the great shell heaps for ‘ rosebuds ’ and ‘ legs 
of mutton.’ All was peaceful and happy, and the 
minister was the happiest of all, for his sermons were 
both done, and lying snug within his Bible in the 
study of the manse. He talked to the superintendent 
at intervals, sucking meanwhile the ends of some 
sprays of honeysuckle. Then he crossed his legs, and 
told tales of how Rob Blair and he lived on ten 
shillings a week in their first session at college. The 
superintendent took mental notes for the benefit of his 
own boys, two of whom were going up to college this 
winter with quite other notions. All was peaceful — a 
bland happiness settled upon the chiefs looking down 
on the whole of their extensive family — a peace rudely 
disturbed by a ‘ cleg ’ which had inquiringly settled on 
the back of the minister’s neck. It was a trying 
moment ; but the minister was calm. He said, quietly : 

‘ Will you be kind enough to kill me that cleg ” 
on the back of my neck, Mr. Poison ? ’ 

The superintendent saw the insect apparently stand- 
ing on its head, gorging itself with clerical blood, and 
realised that he had got a great man for his minister. 
John Black (who was not far away, explaining to three 
teachers and four of the elder scholars that the minister 


JOHN BLACK, CRITIC IN ORDINARY 243 

and superintendent were a couple of incapables) said 
when he went home that it was no wonder that the 
school was going to rack and ruin, for he ‘ saw wi’ his 
ain een the superintendent and the minister fa’in’ oot 
to that extent that the superintendent gied the minister 
a daud i’ the side o’ the heid ! ’ 

In the afternoon we made tea. The young men 
helped the ladies, while John Black kept off the 
children with a stick and also offered advice. The 
children made faces at him, and once when he went 
out of earshot of the group at the fire, Wattie Robb 
squared up at him, and dared him to ‘ come ahint the 
plantin’ ! ’ The minister smiled, looking at the bright 
print-clad girls and their willing assistants, for he 
thought that he would be a white silk handkerchief 
or two the richer before the winter. It is the correct 
thing for the bride to give the minister on the occasion 
of a wedding. 

‘ It wad be mair wiselike,’ said his housekeeper, 
Mary, ‘ if folk that gets marriet had eneuch gumption 
to gie ye guid linen instead o’ middlin’ silk ! ’ 

The children were not a bit tired when they came 
to be mustered for the home-going, and life and limb 
were intact, in spite of John Black’s prophecy. They 
would certainly have been the better of a wash, for 
some of them had apparently been trying to tunnel 
right through ‘ to the Aunty Pods,’ as the farmer of 
Port More said. The superintendent knew of at least 
four boys with deceased rabbits up their trouser legs ; 
but they were all the happier, and they made perfect 
bowers of the carts on the way home with green 

R 


244 JOHN BLACK, CRITIC IN ORDINARY 

branches and flowers, cheering the long journey with 
song. They were a jovial company, and each one of 
them was as hoarse as a crow with shouting and 
hurrahing as they came in triumph through the town 
to dismount at the cross before the assembled towns- 
folk. The superintendent was a proud man that night 
seeing the end of his labours, and a kindly dew stood 
in the minister’s eyes as he watched the red carts, 
crowded with happy young ones, pass him in review 
order. ‘ Of such,’ he said, ‘ is the kingdom of heaven.’ 

But John Black’s voice recalled him to himself as 
he drove by in his auntie’s gig. 

‘ There’ll be an awfu’ lot o’ them no’ weel the morn 
wi’ a’ that unta’endoon raw milk. Ye wad hae been 
better up at Greenshiels wi’ my auntie ! ’ 


THE CANDID FRIEND 


The lamp had long been lighted in the manse of Dule 
— that is, the lamp in the minister's study. The one 
belonging to the sitting-room was not yet brought in, 
for the mistress of the manse was teaching the bairns 
their evening lesson, and the murmur of her voice, 
broken into by the high treble of children’s questions, 
came fitfully to the minister as he ploughed his way 
through Thirdly, He smiled as he heard the inter- 
mittent din, and once he moved as if to leave his 
work to itself and go into the other room ; but a 
glance at the expanse of unfilled paper changed his 
purpose, and he proceeded with his dark spider tracks 
across the white sheet. Men who write chiefly for 
their own reading write badly — ministers worst of all. 
The wind was blowing a hurricane about the manse of 
Dule. The bare branches of the straggling poplars that 
bordered the walk whipped the window of the study, 
and the rain volleyed against the panes in single drops 
the size of shillings. The minister put a lump of coal 
on the fire, pausing a long time before he put it on, 
finally letting it drop with a bang as the uncertain 
joints of the spindle-legged tongs gave way diagonally. 
Tis a way that tongs have, and the minister seemed 


246 


THE CANDID FRIEND 


to feel it, for he said emphatically, ‘ No ; that will not 
do ! ’ But he was referring to Thirdly, So he lay 
back for a long time and cogitated an illustration. 
Then he took a book of reference down from the shelf, 
which proved so interesting that he continued to read 
long after he had passed the limit at which all informa- 
tion germane to his subject ceased. It was another 
way he had, and he excused the habit to himself by 
saying that doubtless in this way he gained a good deal 
of information. 

Then to the window there came a roaring gust 
which bent the frame and thundered among the fir 
trees at the gable end as if it would have them all 
down before the morning. The minister hoped that 
there would be no poor outcast homeless on such a 
night, and as a. sort of per contra he remembered that 
no one could possibly come to interrupt him this even- 
ing at least, and that he might even finish one sermon 
and get well under weigh with the other. 

At this moment he heard the squeak of the bell 
wire that told him that a visitor was at the outer door. 
Some Solomon of an architect or bell-hanger had made 
the bell wire pass through the study on its way to the 
kitchen, and so the minister was warned of the chance 
comer while his feet were yet on the threshold. The 
student under the lamp sighed, lay back in his chair, 
and waited. He almost prayed that it might merely 
be a message ; but no — the sound of shuffling feet. 
It was somebody coming in. 

There was a knock at the study door, and then the 
voice of the faithful Marget, saying : 


THE CANDID FRIEND 


247 


‘ Maister Tammas Partan to see ye, sir/ 

She said this with great distinctness, for the minister 
had once checked her for saying, ‘ Here’s Tammas 
Partan ! ’ which was what she longed to say to this day. 

‘ How are you to-night, Thomas ? ’ asked the 
minister. He tried hard to say, ‘ Pm glad to see you,’ 
but could not manage it, for even a minister has a 
conscience. Mr. Partan’s feet left two muddy marks 
side by side across the carpet. He made a conscience 
of stepping over two mats on his way in. This helped 
(among other things) to make him a popular visitor at 
the manse. 

‘ Thank you, minister ; I’m no’ that unco week’ 

‘ Then are you sure that you should be out such a 
night ? ’ said the minister, anxious for the welfare of 
his parishioner. 

‘ But, as ye say yersel’, Maister Girmory, “ When 
duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.” ’ 

The minister’s heart sank within him, as a stone 
sinks in a deep lake, for he knew that the ‘ candid 
friend ’ had found him out once more — and that his 
tenderest mercies were cruel. But he kept a discreet 
and resigned silence. If the minister had a fault, said 
his friends, it was that he was too quiet. 

‘ Weel, minister,’ said Tammas Partan, ‘ I just cam’ 
up my ways the nicht to see ye, and tell ye what the 
folk were sayin’. I wadna be a frien’ till ye gin I 
didna. Faithfu’, ye ken, are the wounds of a friend ! ’ 
The minister looked at the fire. He was not a man 
inclined to think more highly of himself than he ought 
to think, and he knew that before Tammas Partan had 


248 


THE CANDID FRIEND 


done with his recital he would be too upset to continue 
with his Sabbath morning’s sermon on ^ The Fruits of 
the Spirit,’ at least for that night. It was not the first 
time that Tammas had ‘ thocht it his duty ’ to come 
in at the critical moment and introduce some sand into 
the bearings. Had the minister been a stronger or a 
more emphatic man, he would have told his visitor that 
he did not want to hear his stories, or at least he 
would have so received them that they would not have 
been told a second time. But the minister of Dule 
was acutely sensitive to blame, and the pain of a cruel 
word or an intentional slight would keep him sleepless 
for nights. It is in such parishes as Dule that 
‘Tammas Partans ’ thrive. He had just tried it once 
with Mr. Girmory’s predecessor, one of the grand old 
school of farmer clerics now almost extinct. Tammas 
Partan had once at a Fast Day service on the 
Thursday before the Sacrament Day, risen to his feet 
and said to old Mr. M‘Gowl, who was standing among 
his elders ready for the distribution of tokens : 

‘ Remember the young communicants ! ’ 

‘ Remember your own business ! ’ returned Mr. 
M‘Gowl, instantly, at the same time giving the officious 
interrupter a sounding ‘cuff’ on the side of the 
head. 

After which Tammas, feeling that his occupation 
was gone, joined himself to the sect of the Apostolic 
Brethren, at that time making a stir in the neighbour- 
hood, with whom he was just six weeks in communion 
till they arose in a body and cast him out of the 
synagogue. So he had been houseless and homeless 


THE CANDID FRIEND 


249 


spiritually till Mr. Girmory came, when Tammas, 
seeing him to be a man after his own heart, returned 
back gladly to his old nest. 

‘ They are sayin^ that there’s no’ eneuch life in yer 
sermons, minister — nae grup, so to speak, kind o’ 
wambly an’ cauldrife. Noo, that’s no’ a faut that I 
wad like to fin’ mysel,’ but that’s what they’re sayin’, 
and I thocht it my duty to tell ye.’ 

‘ Also Gashmu saith it ! ’ said the minister. 

‘ What did ye say ? Na, it wasna him ; it was Rab 
Flint, the quarryman, and Andrew Banks of Carsewall, 
that said it — I dinna ken the party that ye name.’ 

‘ Ay,’ said the minister. 

' An’ Lame Sandy, the soutar, thocht that there was 
an awesome lack o’ speerituality in yer discoorse the 
Sabbath afore last. He asked, “ Hoo could ony 
minister look for a blessin’ efter playin’ a hale efternune 
at the Channel-stanes wi’ a’ the riff-raff o’ the neebour- 
hood ? ” ’ 

“ Were ye not there yersel,’ Thomas ? ’ queried the 
minister, quietly, wondering how long this was going 
to last. 

‘ Ou ay ; I’m far frae denyin’ it — but it’s no’ my ain 
opeenions I’m giein’ till ye. I wadna presume to do 
that ; but it’s the talk o’ the pairish. An’ there’s 
Gilbert Loan’s auntie ; she has been troubled wi’ a 
kin’ o’ dwaminess in her inside for near three weeks, 
an’ ye’ve gane by the door mair nor yince, an’ never 
looked the road she was on, sae Gilbert an’ a’ his folk 
are thinkin’ o’ leavin’ the kirk.’ 

‘ But I never heard of it till this minute ! ’ protested 


250 


THE CANDID FRIEND 


the minister, touched at last on a tender spot. ‘ Why 
did they not send me word ? * 

‘Weel, minister, Gilbert said to me that if ye had 
nae better ken o’ yer fowk than no’ to miss them three 
Sabbaths oot o’ the back gallery, they werena gaun to 
bemean themsel’s to sen’ ye nae word.’ 

The minister could just see over the pulpit cushion 
as far as the bald spot on the precentor’s head, but he 
said nothing. 

At this point there was a diversion, for the minister’s 
wife came in. She was not tall in stature, but to 
Tammas she loomed up now like a Jael among women. 
The minister rose to give her a seat, but she had not 
come to sit down, 

‘ Now, I would have you understand once for all, 
Tammas Partan,’ she began — (‘ Weel dune the mis- 
tress ! ’ said Marget, low to herself, behind the door) — 
‘ that we have had more than enough of this ! I’ve 
heard every word ye’ve said to Mr. Girmory, for the 
door was left open ’ — (‘ I saw to that mysel’,’ said 
Marget) — ‘and I want you to carry no more parish 
clashes into my house.’ 

‘ Hush, hush ! my dear ; Tammas means well !’ said 
the minister, deprecatingly. 

But the belligerent little woman did not hear, or at 
any rate did not heed, for she continued addressing 
herself directly to Tammas, who sat on the low chair 
as if he had been dropped there unexpectedly from a 
great height. 

‘Take for granted,’ she said, ‘that whatever is for 
the minister’s good to hear, that he’ll hear without your 


THE CANDID FRIEND 


251 


assistance. And you can tell your friends, Rob Flint 
and Andrew Banks, that if they were earlier out of the 
Red Lion on Saturday night, and earlier up on the 
Sabbath morning, they would maybe be able to 
appreciate the sermon better ; and ye can tell Lame 
Sandy, the soutar, that when he stops wearing his wife 
into the grave with his ill tongue, he may have some 
right to find fault with the minister for an afternoon on 
the ice. And as for Gilbert Loan’s auntie, just ask her 
if she let the doctor hear about her trouble, or if she 
expects him to look in and ask her if there’s anything 
the matter with her little finger every time he passes 
her door ! ’ 

She paused for breath. 

‘ I think I’ll hae to be gaun ; it’s a coorse nicht 1 * 
said the Object on the chair, staggering to its feet. 

‘ Now, Thomas, no offence is meant, and I hope 
you’ll remember that I’m only speaking for your good,’ 
said the minister’s wife, taking a parting shot at a 
venture, and scoring a bull’s-eye. 

‘ Guid-nicht, Tammas Partan,’ said Marget, as she 
closed the door. ' Haste ye back again.’ 

But Tammas has not yet revisited the manse of 
Dule. 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


THE THREE BRIDEGROOMS AND THE ONE BRIDE 

Yes, Sir, I am the Registrar of births, deaths, and 
marriages in the parish of Kilconquhar, and I am asked 
to tell you the story of Meg MacGregor and her three 
lads. Well, it’s an old tale now, and Meg’s boys are 
here every summer vacation pestering the life out of 
me to bait their lines and dress their hooks. But it is a 
tale that is not by any means forgotten in Kilconquhar, 
and in the winter forenights the wives tell it to this 
day in the big kitchen where the lasses are at their 
knitting and the lads are making baskets of the long 
saugh wands before the heartsome fire. 

It was mostly the wild Gregor blood that did it ; 
but Meg’s mother was an Elliot from the Border, and 
we all know that that’s not greatly better. So what 
could ye expect of a lassie that had the daftness in her 
from both sides of the house, as ye might say ? 

Meg was a beauty. There is no doubt of that. 
She had been a big-boned ‘ hempie ’ at the Kirkland 
School for many a day, playing with the laddies when 
they would let her, early and late ; yet clever at her 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


253 


books when she would take the trouble to learn. She 
had the ‘ birr ^ and go of twenty in her from the time 
that she could run alone. Peter Adair, one of her lads 
that was to be, came roaring in to his mother one 
morning when she was a dotting wee thing of four or 
five. 



THE PARISH OF KILCONQUHAR 


‘ What for are ye greetin’ like that, Peter ? ’ said his 
mother. ‘ Wha has been meddlin’ ye ? ’ Peter was 
soft in disposition, but the apple of his mother’s eye. 

‘ Meg MacGregor dadded my lugs because I wadna 
let her kiss me,’ said the gallant Peter, between his 
sobs. 

His mother laughed. ‘ Dinna greet, my bonny 
wean,’ she said ; ‘ the day’ll maybe come when ye’ll 
change yer mind aboot that ! ’ 


254 


A MIDSUMMER IDVLL 


But when that day did come, his mother did not 
like it nearly so well as she had expected. 

When Meg was between sixteen and seventeen it 
suddenly occurred to everybody that she was a beauty. 
It was at a party at the New Year at the Folds, and 
Meg went there in a white gown. She had been at 
the dancing-school that Fiddler Stewart had in the 
village that winter, and she got very fond of the 
dancing. There were two or three lads at the Folds 
from the next parish, and as soon as the dancing 
began there was nobody that was sought after but only 
that hempie Meg. 

The very next day it was a different Meg that 
walked the street, and a different Meg it was that 
came to the kirk on the Sabbath. She rode no more 
astride of the wildest pony in the glen, but she twined 
the lads like rushes of the meadows round the least of 
her fingers. Her father was then, as he is to this day, 
farmer in Stanninstane, and as douce and civil a man 
as there is in the parish, so the wild blood must have 
skipped a generation somehow. Say you so, sir ? 
Indeed, I did not know that such a thing could be 
explained scientifically, but it’s a thing I have noticed 
time and again. ‘ It has been recently discover edl you 
say. Dear me, I did not know it had ever been 
forgotten. ‘ Unto the third and fourth generation ’ is 
an old saying enough, but it’s not unlikely that the 
wise men have forgotten all about Moses. 

Isobel Elliot, David MacGregor’s wife, died when 
Meg was but a lassie, and David himself never laid 
hand on his daughter in the way of correction all his 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


255 


life. She did as she liked with her father all the days 
of her life — as, indeed, for the matter of that, she did 
with every one in this parish, with the very minister 
when the fit was on her, as ye shall hear 

‘ With yourself for instance^ Registrar ? * 

Me ? Oh no, sir. I’m a man that is well stricken 
in years and she would not trouble with me, but I do 
not deny that there was that in the lassie that one 
could not help but like, though as an elder I felt it my 
duty to give her a word of caution and advice more 
than once or twice. 

What said she to that? Well, sir, she said not 
much ; but she turned her eyes up at me under the 
fringes of her eyelashes, and pushing out her red lips 
discontentedly, she said : 

‘ What can I do ? The lads will not let me alone. 
I’m sure I want none of them ! ’ 

‘ And what are you going to do, Meg ? ’ said I, 
smiling-like at her. 

‘ Indeed, Registrar,’ says she, ‘ that I don’t know. 
Unless ’ — here the witch looked shyly up at me with 
her eyes fairly swimming in mischief — ^ unless ye 
maybe micht tak’ me yoursel’.’ 

Keenest of all her suitors — ‘ clean daft ’ about her, 
said the countryside — were three lads of the parish. 
The first I have mentioned already. Peter Adair was 
his mother’s son. She lived in the large house with 
the gate that stood a little back from the village street 
by the side of the bridge. She had money, and Peter 
being a delicate lad in his mother’s estimation, and the 
apple of her eye at all times, had been kept at home 


256 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


when he should have been learning some profession. 
There was now and then a talk of his going up to 
Edinburgh to learn the scientific farming before he 
took a farm of his own, but it had never come to 
anything. He had fallen madly in love with Meg, 
however, and went regularly to town on Wednesdays 
to have a chance of talking with her for five minutes 
as she went about her shopping. His mother had so 
far yielded to his wishes as to get David MacGregor 
to take him on at Stanninstane to try his hand at the 
practical part of farming. He was in ecstasy, for, 
thought he, who knows what opportunities there may 
be of seeing Meg in the intervals of daily duty ? But 
when David handed him over to the grieve, that 
unsympathetic Ayrshireman said, ‘ Practical termin' ! 
Gertie, he shall hae that or my name’s no’ James 
Greg ! ’ Whereupon in five minutes the delicate- 
handed Peter found himself on the top of a cart with 
a fork in his hand, taking his first lesson in practical 
farming by learning how to apply to the soil the 
natural fertilisers necessary for next year’s crop. He 
had two days of that, when he resigned and went 
home, having decided that after all scientific farming 
was most in his line. 

Peter Adair was known to be rich — at least in 
expectations — but nobody thought that Meg would 
favour him on that account. Being an heiress in her 
own right, she had no need. It was, therefore, with 
very great surprise that I was called into the office 
where I do my registrar’s business, and authorised by 
Peter to put up his name on the board along with 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


257 


that of Margaret MacGregor, spinster, also of this 
parish. 

^ Meg’s at the door,’ he said ; ‘ but she did not like 
to come in.’ 

Accordingly I went to the door, and caught a 
glimpse of Meg vanishing into Webster the draper’5 
two doors above. 

Peter had not long gone his way when another 
knock came to the door. 

I opened the door myself. It was just growing 
dusk, and I could hear Meg MacGregor’s voice saying : 

‘ I telled ye afore, ye can gie in the names if ye like, 
but I’ll no tell ye whether I’ll hae ye or no’ till the 
first of August. That’s my twenty-first birthday, and 
I’ll no’ hae a mind o’ my ain till that day.’ 

Again a single man came into the little office, 
lighted with the oil lamp which always smelled a 
little when I had the trimming of it to do myself. 
It was Robert Hislop, the stalwart son of the farmer of 
Netherton, known to be the strongest man in the 
parish. He had waited many a long night to have 
the duty of taking Meg home from all the soirees and 
parties in the neighbourhood. He was 0 , steadfast, 
sturdy, and stupid fellow, who had first of all come 
about the Stanninstane farmhouse to court Meg’s 
younger sister Bess ; but who, like a piece of loose 
paper on the platform of a wayside station when the 
‘ Flying Scotsman ’ thunders through, had been drawn 
into the wake of the greater power. 

The story which connected him with Meg was one 
very characteristic of the man. He had been seeing 


258 


A MIDSUxMMER IDYLL 


Meg and her sister home from some party over at 
the village, and they had got as far on their way as 
the dark avenue under the trees where the white gate 
of the manse and the black gate of the kirkyard face 
one another in a weird whispering silence under the 
arch of leaves. There had been stories of a ghost 
which walked there, and Bess MacGregor was in a 
state of nervous excitement. Meg alternately played 
with and laughed at the fears of her sister. As they 
came between the gates something white leapt along 
the wall with an elricht shriek and stood gibbering 
upon the black gate of the kirkyard. 

Bess MacGregor dropped instantly in a faint. 
Stalwart Rob Hislop took one troubled glance at 
her. Then putting her into the hands of her sister 
he said, tPit some snaw on her face; I’ll be back the 
noo ! ’ 

The spectre did not wait to be pursued, but made 
off swiftly among the tombs, its white robes flying in 
the wind. Rob Hislop went after it with the intent- 
ness of a greyhound on the trail. He caught his foot 
in some twisted grass, fell heavily, but rose again in an 
instant. He saw the spectre leap the wall and take 
the way through the fir-wood. Swifter than before he 
followed, and in a few minutes he ran the ghost down 
in a glade into which the moon was peeping over the 
edge of a cloud. The ghost holloed for mercy as 
Rob’s heavy weight came down upon him. 

‘Let me up,’ he said; ‘it’s only fun. I’m Tam 
M‘Kittrick frae the Gallaberry ! ’ 

‘ Stan’ up, then, Tam M‘Kittrick frae the Gallaberry, 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


259 


for I’m gaun to gie ye the best lickin’ ye ever got in 
your life ! ’ 

Next morning Rob was down at the village bright 
and early, before Purdie the grocer, that sells drugs to 
us when there’s not time to go to Dumfries for them, 
had down his shutters. He rapped at his door, and 
Purdie opened it. 

‘ Onybody no’ weel, Rob ? ’ he says, astonished like. 

‘ Hoo muckle stickin’ plaister hae ye, Maister 
Purdie ? ’ says Rob, anxiously. 

‘ I dinna ken,’ said the grocer, retreating into his 
shop to see ; ‘ maybes a yaird or a yaird an’ a quarter.’ 

‘ Then ye had better gie me a yaird an’ a quarter ! ’ 
answered Rob, instantly. 

‘ Preserve us a’, Rob, what’s wrang ? Hae a’ your 
kye fallen intil the quarry hole ? ’ 

‘ Na,’ said Rob, seriously; Ht’s for Tam M‘Kittrick 
o’ the Gallaberry. He was playing bogles up by the 
minister’s liggate yestreen, an’ I misdoot but he fell 
and hurt himsel’ ! ’ 

Now, sir, you’ll hardly believe me, though I can 
show you the notices in a minute, but that very nicht 
on the back of ten o’clock there was another knock 
came on the door, and in comes Frank Armstrong, the 
young son of the farmer of Lintfield, whose ground 
marches with that of David MacGregor. 

‘ Are you going to be married to Meg MacGregor ? ’ 
said I, laughing. 

‘Yes,’ said he, surprised. ‘Hoo did ye ken that, 
Registrar ? ’ 


S 


26 o 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


You might have knocked me down with a straw. 
There were three bridegrooms to one bride. 

‘ Did Meg tell ye ye were to come an’ gie in the 
names ? ’ said I. 

‘ Ay/ said the boy, blushing to the roots of his fair 
hair, for he was only a year older than Meg herself, 
and did not look his years. 

‘ We made it up when I was harvesting there last 
year ; but Meg, she wad never gie a decided answer till 
the nicht.’ 

‘ What did she say ? ’ I asked. 

‘ She said that she was to be married on her twenty- 
first birthday, but that she wadna tell me whether she 
wad hae me till we were afore the minister. “ But ye 
can pit up the names gin ye like,” says she.’ 

So all the names were put up. 

There never was such a day on the street of this 
village as what there was that day. I had to lock 
myself in, front and back, and get my groceries through 
the window in the gable end ; but I answered no 
questions, the young men held their counsel, and Meg 
was away from home. 

Some one went to see the minister and inform him 
of the scandal. But they came away with a flea in 
their lug, for the minister told them that Meg her- 
self had trysted him to marry her at Stanninstane 
on the 1st of August. 

‘ And who did she say was the .young man ? ’ 
inquired the deputation. 

‘Well/ said the minister, running his hand through 
his white locks, ‘ I don’t think she said, but I have no 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


261 

doubt that he is worthy of her. I have a very high 
opinion of Margaret’s common sense and practical 
ability.’ 

‘ Preserve us, she’s made a fule o’ the verra minister ! ’ 
said the gossips. 

There was nothing talked about but the marriage as 
the 1st of August came on. I got an invite from 
David himself, who kept a very straight upper lip on 
the subject. There were many that went up to the 
Stanninstane loaning end to see what was to come of 
it, but they got no farther, for there was David Mac- 
Gregor’s two brothers from the Highlands with big 
sticks, dour and determined chiels, and they let nobody 
pass but them that were invited. 

When we got there we were shown into the parlour, 
where about twenty of a company were assembled. 
Bess moved about as shy and sweet as any girl need 
be. Out of the reach of the more brilliant attractions 
of her sister, she was a very pretty young woman. 
Soon the minister came in. Peter Adair sat and 
simpered on the sofa in his lavender kids. Rob Hislop 
looked exceedingly uncomfortable in a black suit and 
a white rose which Bess had pinned in his button-hole. 
It took a long time to pin, for Rob is very tall, and 
Bess could hardly reach so far up. During the operation 
Rob went red and white by turns, and looked pitifully 
at Bess. I thought that he was trying vainly to read 
her sister’s decision in her eyes, but it turned out that 
I was wrong. 

Sharp at the stroke of four David brought Meg in 
on his arm. She looked radiant in fleecy white, and 


262 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


her hair in rippling waves like the edges of the little 
clouds when the sun begins to think about going to 
bed. Well, yes, sir, if I am a crusty old bachelor, I 
thank God I was not born blind. 

‘ Let the parties take their place,’ said the minister. 

Meg looked wildly about. 

‘ Where’s Frank ? ’ she cried, going suddenly as white 
as her dress. 

‘ He has not come yet,’ said Bess, as sweet as a ripe 
gooseberry, looking innocently at her sister. ‘ Rob 
Hislop says he saw him working in the barn ! ’ 

Meg dropped into a chair. ‘It serves me right!’ 
she said, beginning to sob. ‘ It serves me quite right. 
I’ll not be married to anybody but Frank. I’ve been 
a wicked girl, and I deserve it I ’ 

So she sat and cried while all of us looked helplessly 
on. Sometimes she glanced up at us, with the tears 
running steadily down her cheeks and dripping on the 
thin white of her marriage dress. 

Bess stood by the side of Rob Hislop very demure 
and quiet, but with a curious light on her face. 

‘ Run,’ she said suddenly to Rob, ‘ and bring Frank 
Armstrong here this minute.’ 

And Rob Hislop, glad to find something to do, 
started immediately. Peter Adair went after him, but 
ere they were clear of the house Meg suddenly started 
from her chair and disappeared into the part of the 
house from which she had come. In a minute I followed 
the others to the door, and as I got to the end of the 
house I caught one glimpse of Meg MacGregor’s white 
frock vanishing down the woodside path which led in 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


263 


the direction of Lintfield. Rob Hislop and Peter Adair 
had taken the same direction, but had gone round by 
the highway. It is said that Meg found Frank Arm- 
strong in the barn getting the reaper ready for the 
harvest. But no one knows what she said to him. 
This only is certain, that in a little Frank and Meg 
came arm in arm along the plantation path, his father 
and brother following full of surprise. Frank was 
dressed in his working suit, but for all that he looked 
a bright and handsome bridegroom. 

Soon the two messengers came in, much out of 
breath. 

Meg went up to them and said, ‘ Rob, you’ll be best 
man and tak’ in Bessie. It was her ye aye likit best 
at ony rate ! ’ 

‘ I’ll no’ say but ye’re richt ! ’ said Rob, obediently 
giving his arm to the blushing Bessie. 

‘ And, Peter, you’ll forgive me, I’m sure. It’s 
for the best, an’ I wad never have got on wi’ yer 
mither ! ’ 

Peter extended his hand with the lavender glove 
still on it. 

' Weel,’ he said, ‘ maybes it’ll be a relief to her ! ’ 

So Frank Armstrong married Meg MacGregor on 
her. twenty-first birthday in his working coat, and it 
was not long before Rob Hislop married Bessie in new 
Sunday ‘ blacks.’ 

Peter Adair still lives with his mother in the house 
with the green gate by the bridge. He has started a 
poultry show, for he has become a great pigeon fancier. 
Meg’s boys spend most of their time with him when 


264 


A MIDSUMMER IDYLL 


they’re here. But what put the ploy into the madcap 
lassie’s head is more than I can tell. In my way of 
thinking it was just the wild blood of the MacGregors 
of the Highlands, and indeed the Border Elliots are 
little better. As is, indeed, generally admitted. 






GLOAMING OVER CURLYWEE 



THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


The Minister of Education started to walk across the 
great moors of the Kells Range so early in the morning 
that for the first time for twenty years he saw the sun 
rise. Strong, stalwart, unkempt, John Bradfield, Right 
Honourable and Minister of the Queen, strode over the 
Galloway heather in his rough homespun. ‘ Ursa 
Major ^ they called him in the House. His colleagues, 
festive like schoolboys before the Old Man with the 
portfolios came in, subscribed to purchase him a brush 
and comb for his hair, for the jest of the Cabinet 
Minister is even as the jest of the schoolboy. John 
Bradfield was sturdy in whatever way you might 
take him. Only last session he engineered a great 
measure of popular education through the House of 
Commons in the face of the antagonism, bitter and 
unscrupulous, of Her Majesty’s Opposition, and the 
Gallio lukewarmness of his own party. So now there 
was a ripple of great contentment in the way he shook 
back locks which at forty-five were as raven black as 
they had been at twenty-five ; and the wind that blew 
gently over the great billowy expanse of rock and 
heather smoothed out some of the crafty crows’ feet 
deepening about his eyes. 


268 


THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


When he started on a thirty-mile walk over the 
moors, along the dark purple precipitous slopes above 
Loch Trool, the glory of summer was melting into the 
more Scottish splendours of a fast-coming autumn, for 
the frost had held off long, and then in one night had 
bitten snell and keen. The birches wept sunshine, and 
the rowan trees burned red fire. 

The Minister of Education loved the great spaces 
of the Southern uplands, at once wider and eerier than 
those of the Highlands. There they lie waiting for 
their laureate. No one has sung of them nor written in 
authentic rhyme the strange weird names which the 
mountain tops bandy about among each other, appel- 
lations hardly pronounceable to the southron. John 
Bradfield, however, had enough experience of the dialect 
of the ‘ Tykes' of Yorkshire to master the intricacies of 
the nomenclature of the Galloway uplands. He even 
understood and could pronounce the famous quatrain : 

‘The Slock, Milquharker, and Craignine, 

The Breeshie and Craignaw ; 

Are the five best hills for corklit, 

That e’er the Star wife saw.’ ^ 

The Minister of Education hummed this rhyme, 
which he had learned the night before from his host in 
the tall tower which stands by the gate of the Ferrytown 
of Cree. As he made his way with long swinging gait 
over the heather, travelling by compass and the shrewd 
head which the Creator had given him, he was aware 

^ In old times the rocks and cliffs of the Dungeon of Buchan were 
famous for a kind of moss known as ‘ corklit,’ used for dyeing, the gathering 
of which formed part of the livelihood of the peasantry. At one time 
it was much used for dyeing soldiers’ red coats . — Harperh Rambles in 
Calloway, 


THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


269 


about midday of a shepherd’s hut which lay in his track. 
He went briskly up to the door, passing the little pocket- 
handkerchief of kail-yaird which the shepherd had 
carved out of the ambient heather. The purple bells 
grew right up to the wall of grey stone dyke which had 
been built to keep out the deer, or mayhap occasionally 
to keep them in, when the land was locked with snow, 
and venison was toothsome. 

‘ Good day to you, mistress,’ said the Minister of 
Education, who prided himself on speaking to every 
woman in her own tongue. 

‘ And good day to you, sir,’ heartily returned the 
sonsy, rosy-cheeked goodwife, who came to the door, 
‘ an’ blithe I am to see ye. It’s no that aften that I 
see a body at the Back Hoose o’ Curlywee.’ 

John Bradfield soon found himself well entertained — 
farles of cake, crisp and toothsome, milk from the cow, 
with golden butter in a lordly dish, cheese from a little 
round kebbuck, which the mistress of the Back House 
of Curlywee kept covered up with a napkin to keep it 
moist. 

The goodwife looked her guest all over. 

‘Ye’ll not be an Ayrshireman nae. I’m thinkin’. 
Ye kind o’ favour them in the features, but ye hae the 
tongue o’ the English.’ 

‘ My name is John Bradfield, and I come from 
Yorkshire,’ was the reply. 

‘ An’ my name’s Mistress Glencairn, an’ my man 
Tammas is herd on Curlywee. But he’s awa’ ower by 
the Wolf’s Slock the day lookin’ for some forwandered 
yowes.’ 


270 


THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


The Minister of Education, satisfied with the good 
cheer, bethought himself of the curly heads that he had 
seen about the door. There was a merry face, brown 
with the sun, brimful of mischief, looking round the 
corner of the lintel at that moment. Suddenly the 
head fell forward and the body tumultuously followed, 
evidently by some sudden push from behind. The 
small youth recovered himself and vanished through 
the door, before his mother had time to do more than 

say, ‘ My certes, gin I catch you loons as she 

made a dart with the handle of the besom at the 
culprit. 

For a little John Bradfield was left alone. There 
were sounds of a brisk castigation outside, as though 
some one were taking vigorous exercise on tightly 
stretched corduroy. ‘ And on the mere the wailing 
died away ! ’ 

‘ They’re good lads eneuch,’ said the mistress, entering 
a little breathless, and with the flush of honest endea- 
vour in her eye, ‘ but when their faither’s oot on the 
hill they get a wee wild. But as ye see, I try to bring 
them up in the way that they should go,’ she added, 
setting the broomstick in the corner. 

‘ What a pity,’ said the Minister of Education, ‘ that 
such bright little fellows should grow up in this lonely 
spot without an education.’ 

He was thinking aloud more than speaking to his 
hostess. The herd’s wife of Curlywee looked him over 
with a kind of pity mingled with contempt. 

‘ Edicated ! did ye say ? My certes, but my bairns 
are as weel edicated as onybody’s bairns. Juist e’en 


THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


27 


try them, gin it be your wull, sir, an* aiblins ye’ll fin’ 
them no’ that far ahint yer ain ! ’ 

Going to the door she raised her voice to the tele- 
phonic pitch of the Swiss jodel and the Australian 
‘ coo — ee! 

‘Jee-mie, Aa-leck, Aa-nie, come ye a’ here this 
meenit ! ’ 

The long Galloway vowels lingered on the still air, 
even after Mistress Glencairn came her ways back again 
into the house. There was a minute of a great silence 
outside. Then a scuffle of naked feet, the sough of 
subdued whispering, a chuckle of interior laughter, and 
a prolonged scuffling just outside the window. 

‘ Gin ye dinna come ben the hoose an’ be douce, you 
Jeemie, an’ Rob, an’ Alick, I’ll come till ye wi’ a stick ! 
Mind ye, your faither ’ill no be lang frae hame the day.’ 

A file of youngsters entered, hanging their heads, 
and treading, on each other’s bare toes to escape being 
seated next to the formidable visitor. 

‘Wull it please ye, sir, to try the bairns’ learning 
for yoursel’ ? ’ 

A Bible was produced, and the three boys and their 
sister read round in a clear and definite manner, 
lengthening the vowels it is true, but giving them their 
proper sound, and clanging their consonants like 
hammers ringing on anvils. 

‘Very good !’ said John Bradfield, who knew good 
reading when he heard it. 

From reading they went on to spelling, and the 
great Bible names were tried in vain. The Minister of 
Education was glad that he was examiner,^ and not a 


272 


THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


member of the class. Hebrew polysyllables and Greek 
proper names fell thick and fast to the accurate aim of 
the boys, to whom this was child’s play. History 
followed, geography, even grammar, maps were ex- 
hibited, and the rising astonishment of the Minister of 
Education kept pace with the quiet complacent pride of 
the Herd’s Wife of Curlywee. The examination found 
its appropriate climax in the recitation of the ‘ Shorter 
Catechism.’ Here John Bradfield was out of his depth, 
a fact instantly detected by the row of sharp examinees. 
He stumbled over the reading of the questions. He 
followed the breathless enunciation of that expert in 
the ‘ Caritches,’ Jamie, with a gasp of astonishment. 
Jamie was able to say the whole of Effectual Calling in 
six ticks of the clock, the result sounding to the 
uninitiated like the prolonged birr of intricate clockwork 
rapidly running down. 

‘ What is the chief end of man ? ’ slowly queried the 
Minister of Education, with his eye on the book. 

‘ Mans-chiefend-glorfyGod-joyim-frever ! ’ returned 
Jamie nonchalantly, all in one word, as though some 
one had asked him what was his name. 

The Minister of Education threw down his Cate- 
chism. 

‘ That is enough. They have all done well, and 
better than well. Allow me,’ he said, doubtfully turning 
to his hostess, ‘ to give them each a trifle ' 

‘ Na, na,’ said Mistress Glencairn, ‘ let them e’en do 
their work withoot needin’ carrots hadden afore their 
nose like a cuddy. What wad they do wi’ siller ? ’ 

‘ Well, you will at least permit me to send them 


THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


273 


each a book by post — I suppose that you get letters 
up here occasionally ? * 

‘ ^Deed, there’s no that muckle correspondence amang 
us, but when we’re ower at the kirk there, yin o’ the 
herds on Lamachan that gangs doon by to see a lass 
that leeves juist three miles frae the post-office, an’ she 
whiles fetches ocht that there may be for us, an’ he 
gi’es it us at the kirk.’ 

John Bradfield remembered his letters and telegrams 
even now entering in a steady stream into his London 
office and overflowing his ministerial tables, waiting his 
return — a solemnising thought. He resolved to build 
a house on the Back Hill of Curly wee, and have his 
letters brought by way of the kirk and the Lamachan 
herd’s lass that lived three miles from the post-office. 

‘ Oot wi’ ye ! ’ said the mistress briefly, addressing 
her offspring, and the school scaled with a tumultuous 
rush, which left a sense of vacancy and silence and 
empty space about the kitchen. 

‘ And now will you tell me how your children are 
so well taught?’ said John Bradfield. ‘How far are 
you from a school ? ’ 

‘ Weel, we’re sixteen mile frae Newton Stewart, 
where there’s a schule but no road, an’ eleven frae the 
Clatterin’ Shaws, where there’s a road but no schule.’ 

‘ How do you manage then ? ’ The Minister was 
anxious to have the mystery solved. 

‘ We keep a tutor ! ’ said the herd’s wife of Curly- 
wee, as calmly as though she had been a duchess. 

The clock ticked in its shiny mahogany case, like a 
hammer on an anvil, so still it was. The cat yawned 


274 


THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


and erected its back. John Bradfield’s astonishment 
kept him silent. 

‘ Keep a tutor/ he muttered ; ‘ this beats all I have 
ever heard about the anxiety of the Scotch peasantry 
to have their children educated. We have nothing like 
this even in Yorkshire.’ 

Then to his hostess he turned and put another 
question. 

‘ And, if I am not too bold, how much might your 
husband get in the year ? ’ 

‘Tammas Glencairn is a guid man, though he’s my 
man, an’ he gets a good wage. He’s weel worthy o’t. 
He gets three an’ twenty pound in the year, half 
score o’ yowes, a coo’s grass, a bow o’ meal, a bow o’ 
pitatas, an’ as mony peats as he likes to cast, an’ win’, 
an’ cairt.’ 

‘ But how,’ said John Bradheld, forgetting his 
manners in his astonishment, ‘ in the name of fortune 
does he manage to get a tutor ? ’ 

‘ fie disna keep him. I keep him ! ’ said Mistress 
Glencairn with great dignity. 

The Minister of Education looked his genuine 
astonishment this time. Had he come upon an heiress 
in her own right ? 

His hostess was mollified by his humbled look. 

‘Ye see, sir, it’s this way,’ she said, seating herself 
opposite to him on a clean-scoured, white wooden chair : 
‘ there’s mair hooses in this neighbourhood than ye wad 
think. There’s the farm hoose o’ the Black Craig o’ 
Dee, there’s the herd’s hoose o’ Garrary, the onstead o’ 
Neldricken, the Dungeon o’ Buchan — an’ a wheen mair 





Mmrn 






THE BARRIER OF THE HILLS 












THE TUTOR OF CURLYWEE 


277 


that, gin I telled ye the names o’, ye wadna be a bit 
the wiser. Weel, in the simmer time, whan the colleges 
gang doon, we get yin o’ the college lads to come to 
this quarter. There’s some o’ them fell fond to come. 
An’ they pit up for three or fower weeks here, an’ for 
three or fower weeks at the Garrary ower by, an’ the 
bairns travels ower to whaur the student lad is bidin’, 
an’ gets their learnin’. Then when it’s time for the 
laddie to be gaun his ways back to college, we send him 
awa’ weel buskit wi’ muirland claith, an’ weel providit 
wi’ butter an’ eggs, oatmeal an’ cheese, for the comfort 
o’ the wame o’ him. Forbye we gather up among 
oorsels an’ bid him guid speed wi’ a maitter o’ maybe 
ten or twal’ poun’ in his pooch. Ati that's the way we 
keep a tutor I ’ 




% 


V/ 







I 

t 

\ # 
. I i 


if ** ■ ' 


^1 


GLOSSARY 


The derivations of a number of words have been given in this Glossary 
for the purpose of showing how large a number of old Anglo-Saxon words 
are still in use in this country ; in fact, in the Scottish dialect of the 
present day the largest amount we have of the language of the old 
Northumbrian kingdom (Anglo-Saxon) is to be found, and these remains 
must not be looked upon, as is too often the case, as mere provincial patois; 
relics of this language prevail also over a large part of Yorkshire, and in 
other districts of England north of the Humber ; there are about two 
thousand of these old words and many idioms given in the admirable 
Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect^ by Canon Atkinson, identically the 
same with those in our Scottish dialect, and for the most part almost 
unknown in Southern Britain. 

The Scottish dialect has been considerably influenced by the close 
connection of this country with France in the fifteenth century ; this 
influence is more marked in the S.E. part of Scotland, and has affected 
Galloway only slightly. It is somewhat interesting to note that a good 
many words which we owe to the French, and which are now obsolete in 
France, have still a lively existence in Scotland. 

Some of the words given are used metaphorically or obliquely, and 
are peculiar to Galloway and other adjoining parts in the south of Scot- 
land : e.g. Streekin\ “going in the direction of,” the proper meaning 
of the word is stretchings and is generally applied to laying out a corpse ; 
Birls “quick motion in walking,” the proper meaning is to drink plenti- 
fully, generally in company; Grooing, “desire,” properly “to shudder, to 
shiver,” etc. etc. The meaning of the words given in the Glossary is in 
accordance with the meaning of the text, and perhaps may not be so 
found in Jamieson’s dictionary or other glossaries. The spelling of the 
Scotch words used by the author is sometimes different from the usual 
form, e.g. Hauf is usually spelt by Scott, Burns, and others, Hotiffs 
Howjfs etc. etc. 

The derivations without initial letters before the word are Anglo-Saxon, 
V. indicates Teutonic dialects, Norse, Old Swedish, Swedish, German, etc., 


28 o 


GLOSSARY 


O.F. Old French, F. French, C. Celtic (not necessarily Gaelic), Sc. Scottish, 
Obi. an oblique meaning of the word. 

The two Anglo-Saxon letters expressing the “th” are {) and 0. The 
first |) is the hard sound as in {)aec (Sc. thack)^ thatch ; the other, is 
soft as in eaSe (Sc. eitk)^ easy. “C” is almost invariably sounded hard 
as cyrc, pronounced “kirk.” 

“ge ” is often placed before A. S. words, seemingly void of significance, e.g. 
gelic^ like, gefylan^ to dirty, etc. The accented “a” is long as in “may,” 
“say”; sometimes it is pronounced nearly as “o,”in “bone,” “home,” etc. 

Cargen, Novejuber 1894. P. D. 


Ablow, below 

Ae, Ane, one — dn, T. a; Ae 
and ane are not equivalents 
or interchangeable ; e.g, “You 
have two daughters, I think, 
Mr. Deans ? ” Ae daughter, 
sir — only ane.^^ — ScOTT. 

Aff, of — af 
Afore, before 
Ahint, behind — hindan 
Ain, own — agen 
Auld, old — aid 
Ava, at all 
Aw, I 

Awa, away — aweg 
Awmus, alms — cElmesse 
Ayont, beyond — Obi. from 
ay at a., to drive out 

Back-end, latter end 
Back-set, a check 
Bailie, magistrate of burgh — F. 
bailli 

Bairn, child — beam 


Baimly, childish 
Baith, both — bai^ bd 
Bane, bone — bdn 
Bars, adventures 
Banks, rafters — T. bielke 
Bawbee, 1 halfpenny 
Behadden, indebted. 

Ben, inner apartment of a 
cottage — binna7i 
Bena, except — from beneahy 
should want 

Besom, a broom — bese7n 
Besom, a contemptuous term for 
a woman — Obi. from bys77try 
disgrace. 

Bestial, cattle of all kinds — F. 
bestiaiix 

Bide, remain — hidan 
Birr, force, energy — T. byr 
Birses, bristles — byrst 
Bit, a place or particular spot 
Blastie, a term of contempt ; 
from blasted. 

Blate, shy, diffident — T. blade 


^ A curious tradition used to be current in Fife regarding this name. 
“When one of the infant kings of Scotland, of great expectation, was showm 
to the public, for the preservation of order the price of admission was in 
propoi^on to the rank of the visitant. The eyes of the superior classes being 
feasted, their retainers and the mobility were admitted at the rate of six 
pennies (Sc.) each. Hence this piece of money, being the price of seeing the 
royal Babie, received the name of Babie." Jam. — Pinkerton derives it from 
the F. bas-billon, as when it was first coined it was a very rude coin, and not 
well made till the time of James VI. 


GLOSSARY 


281 


Blithe, merry, happy — bli'^e 
Bogles, hobgoblins — C. bwg 
Bonded, apprenticed — boftd^ 
bound 

Bood, must, obliged — bod 
Bools, marbles — F. botde 
Boost, guide 
Bow, boll, two bushels 
Brae, hillock, rising ground — 
C. braigh 

Braid, broad — brcea 
Braw, fine — T. brauwe^ or F. 
brave 

Brawly, finely, nicely 
Broo, brow — brcsw 
Brose, a kind of pottage — Obi. 
from briw^ small pieces of 
meat in broth. 

Buckie, any spiral shell — Obi. 
from T. bucken^ to bow, to 
bend, expressing the twisted 
form of the shell 
Buik, book, the Buik, the Bible 
— boc 

Bun, bound 

Bunk, bed, bedstead — bone 
Buskit, dressed, adorned — T. 
butz 

But and ben, outer and inner 
apartments of a cottage — bute^ 
ben7iin 

Bye, past, beyond 
Byegaun, going past — higeon- 
gende 

Byordinar, extraordinary 
Byke, a bees’ nest — T. buyck 
Byre, cow-house — 0.¥,bouverre 

Caaed, called 

Ca’ed the crack, kept up con- 
versation 

Cakker, the iron rim on the 
sole of a clog 


Gallant, a lad — callajt 
Caller, fresh, cool — from cdld^ 
cold 

Ganna, can not — can-nd 
Caritches, catechisms ; more 
particularly the Westminster 
catechism used by most 
Presbyterian churches 
Casb-OOt, a quarrel 
Cast peats. To, to dig and dry 
peat or turf for fuel 
Cauff, chaff — ceaf 
Cauldrife, — cdld^ and Obi. 

hreof^ a skin eruption. 

Gertie, faith ; “ my certie,” by 
my faith — O.F. certe 
Chack, a slight bruise or cut — 
T. kack 

Channel stanes, stones used in 
the game of curling 
Chappin, striking — T. happen 
Chappit, struck — from T. 

Chiels, young fellows — cila 
Chuckles, fowls — T. kuyken 
Clachen, small village, cluster 
of houses — C. clachan 
Claes, clothes — cla3 
Clash, gossip — T. klatschen 
Clavers, idle talk — T. klafer 
Oleg, horse-fly — T. klegg 
Clockin, the act of hatching — 
clocca7t 

Clodding, throwing clods, stones, 
etc. — from clud^ a stone, 
rock 

Cloots, bits of cloth, etc. — 
clut 

Cluds, clouds — T. clote 
Colledged, sent to a college 
Collie, shepherd’s dog — C. culie 
Centres, contradict — F. contre 
Coo, cow — cu 
Coonts, sums in arithmetic 


282 


GLOSSARY 


Corklit, a species of lichen, 
formerly used by country 
people for dyeing 
Cowes, exceeds, surpasses — T. 
kufwa 

Crack, talking freely — Obi. from 
cracian^ to croak 
Craw, a crow — craw 
Creests, insignificant people 
Crony, intimate friend — C. 
caraid 

Crouse, brisk, lively; “craw sae 
crouse,” to speak boastingly — 
from F. cotcrroucer^ to provoke 
Crumpy, short, crisp — from 
crumps crooked 
Cuddy, ^ donkey 
Cuist, cast 

Dadded, struck, beaten — from 
dced^ an action 

His mother came out, and wi’ a dish- 
clout, 

She daddit about his mow.” 

Sc. Ball. 

Daftness, madness — dofung; T. 
daup insipid 

Daud, a stroke — from deed 
Davert, an exclamation = “ I’m 
dumfoundered ” — from T. 
daver, tremble 

Dear sirce, an exclamation, corr. 
of sirs 

Deed-thraw, last agonies of 
death — ])redwam, suffering 
Dicht, wipe — diht 
Div, do — “ I div na,” I do not 
Dochter, daughter — dochter 


Doited, stupid — dofung 
Dominie, schoolmaster, tutor 

“ When book and gowns are all cried 
down, 

Nae dominies for me, laddie.” 

Sc. Song. 

Doon, down — dune 
Door, Dour, obstinate, sullen — 
F. dur 

Doot, doubt — F. doute 
Dootsome, doubtful 
Douce, quiet, gentle — F. doucet 
Dovered, to be in a state between 
sleeping and waking — from T. 
dur^ sleep 

‘ ‘ She laid her doon in the fairy ring. 
An’ clos’t her dovran ee.” 

Sc. Ball. 

Drouthy, thirsty — druga'^ 

Drug, slow 

Dunch, push, jog — T. duns 

‘ ' The unco brute much dunchid 
dree’d 

Frae twa -year-aids and stirks.” 

Sc. Poem. 

Dune, done 

Dungeon o’ learning, profoundly 
learned 

“ Before Dr. Johnson came to break- 
fast, Lady Lothbury said, ‘ he was 
a dungeon of wit.' " — Bos. 

Dwaminess, faintness — T. 

dulam 

Dyke, wall — die 

Eby, Ebenezer 
Een, eyes — edh 


^ This word, no doubt, was introduced by the Egyptians (gipsies) who 
appeared in Scotland about the middle of the fifteenth century, and who at 
an early period were almost the sole possessors of donkeys ; the Hindustani 
and Persian word is gudda (from whom the gipsies obtained it), and is used 
in these countries, as here, literally and metaphorically. 


GLOSSARY 


283 


Eerie, Eerier, depressing situa- 
tion, suggesting the presence 
of ghosts — fear 

‘ ‘ I there wi’ Something did forgather, 
That pat me in an eerie swither. ” 
Burns. 

Efter, after — efter 
Efternune, afternoon — efternon 
Eident, diligent — Obi. from 
ge\ian^ counsel, advice 
Elricht, unearthly — from alf^ 
ric^ abounding in elves 
En’bra, Edinburgh 
Even, to equal, compare 

‘ ‘ What ! would ony Christian body 
even yon bit object to a bonny sonsy 
weel-faured young woman like Miss 
Catline ? ” — T. Hamilton. 

Fa, who — Aber. pron. 

Fa’ on wi’ her, fall in with her 
Faceable, presentable 
Faither, father— 

Fand, found — -fund 
Farls, properly the quarter of a 
thin oat or meal cake, often 
used for the whole cake — 
feof^a^ dcel 
Faute, fault — Y.faiite 
Favour, to resemble, to be like 
any of one’s relatives 
Feck, expresses both quantity 
and space — -fcBc 

“ I hae been a de’il now the feck o’ my 
life.” — B urns. 

Feckless, feeble — Obi. from 
feccan^ to take away, steal 
FegS, a mincing oath, corn of 
faith 

Fell, strong, very — -fedla 

“ He’s a fell clever lad, an’ a bonnie 
wee man.” — Lady Nairne. 


Fettle, energy, power — Obi. 
from T. faetil^ a band, fetter 

"His queets were dozen’d, and the 
fettle tint.” — Ross. 

Firslin, bustling 
Flee, a fly — -Jieoh 
Fleechin’, wheedling, flattering 
— T. fletsen 

Flit, to remove — Obi. from fliht^ 
flight 

Focht, fought — feoht 
Forebears, ancestors — from fore^ 
before, and bearn^ a child 
Forby, besides — T. foerbi 
Forenicht, evening— /orni/tt 
Forrit, forwards 
Fowk, people— fo/c 
Frae, from — fra 
Fricht, fright — geforht 
Fyle, to dirty — gefylan 

Gae, gang, %o—gd, gang 
Gaed, went — from gdn 
Gaen, gane, gone— gdn 
Gar, gars, garred, obliged, com- 
pel — T. goer 
Gat, got 

Gate, gait, way, road — gdta 

‘ ‘ Mony ane speirs the gate they ken 
fu’ week” — Sc. Prov. 

Gaun, going — gangen 
Gear, property of all kinds — T. 
gier 

" There’s in the stedin’, 
There’s gear in the kye. 

There’s gear in the hoose, 

An’ there’s lyin’ bye.” 

Anon. 

Gey, gye, very, rather, consider- 
able — O.F. gay 
Gie, give — gifan 
Gied, gave — ixom gift an 


284 


GLOSSARY 


Giein, giving — giftan 
Gif, gin, 

Gilravagin, going about in a 
furious way. The latter part 
of the word may derive from 
reafian^ to rob, to seize 
Girdle, a round iron plate used 
for baking cakes — gyrdel 
Glaur, mud — gdr 

“Justwhare their feet the dubs had 
glaur' d .” — Sc. Poem. 

Glisk, glimpse, a glance of light 
— T. glis 

Glower, to stare, to look in- 
tensely — T. gluyer 
Glowering, staring 

** Glowering is nae gainsaying" (in 
courtship). — Sc. Prov. 

Goon, gown 
Greet, to weep — gret 
Greeten, weeping — grdten 
Grew, greyhound — T. grey^ a 
dog, ox grcEg, grey 
Greybeard, an earthenware 
vessel 

‘ ‘ And there’s plenty o’ brandy in the 
greybeard, ’ ’ — Scott. 

Grig, a crack 

Grooin', shivering from cold, 
griping — T. grouwen 
Guid, good — god 
Gumption, common sense, 

understanding — Obi. from 
gyman,, care, attention 

‘ ' Come awa, Watty, ye gumptionless 
cuif.” — G alt. 

Gundy, toffy — perhaps Obi. from 
Sc. gutidie,^ greedy 


Guriy, bleak, stormy — Obi. from 
gor,^ mud, dirt 

‘ ‘ The lift grew dark, and the wind 
grew loud. 

And gurly grew the sea.” 

Sc. Ball. 

Gurring, growling, as a dog — 
from gyrrnain, to roar 

Hae, have — hc^fd 
Haes, has — from hcsfd 
Hairst, harvest — hcerfest, ‘‘To 
owe one a day in hairst^'* is 
to reciprocate for some 
previous help 
Hale, whole — heel 
Hame, home — ham 
Hantle, a considerable number, 
or quantity. — Obi. from hand- 
ful 

"Nae doubt there’s a hantle mis- 
cellawneous eating aboot a pig. ’ ’ 
Dean Ramsay. 

Hasp, a latch — hceps 
Haud, hold — haldan 
Haun 0’ write, handwriting 
Havers, Havering, nonsense, 
talking nonsense — T. hefer 
Heartsome, cheerful, merry 

" Dear me, how heartsome it looks 
now to what it us’t." 

Mrs. Hamilton. 

Hef, have — Gaelic pron. 

Heid, head — hcefd 
Hempie, a giddy, roguish, romp- 
ing person ; lit. one deserving 
the hemp, i.e. hanging ; how- 
ever, almost always used in 
a jocular sense 

" I was a daft hempie lassie then." 

Scott. 

Heuch, a crag, a rugged steep 
— hou 


GLOSSARY 285 


Hing, hang, hung — heitg 
Hinneren, later on, afterwards 
Hirpled, moving haltingly — T. 
harpa 

“He, tir’d and weary, hirpled down 
the brae.” — Ross. 

Hoast, Host, a cough — hweost 
Hoolet, an owl — F. hulotte 
Hoo’s a’ wi’ ye ? how are 
you ? 

Hoose, house — hus 
Hotchin, moving with jerks — F. 
hocher 

Howkin’, digging — from T. 

kolk^ a cave 

‘ * Whiles mice and modewurks they 
howket." — Burns. 

Ilka, each — -ylc 

“ Ilka blade o’ grass keps its ain drap 
o’ dew. ” — Ballantine. 

Ill, angry, bad — Obi. ixom yfel^ 
wicked, bad 

“ He was very ill about it.” 

Ingle-nook, fire-side. — C. ain- 
geal, fire 

Intil, into — ///, to 
Ise, I will 
Ither, other 

Jaloose, suspect — Obi. from F. 
jaloux 

Jorum, drinking vessel — C. corn 
Jow, to move from side to side, 
to ring, toll — Prob. from F. 
jouer 

“If ye want to hear the bell, I will 
just show mysell on the knowe- 
head, and it will begin jowing forth- 
with.” — S cott. 


Kail, Kale, cabbage, broth made 
of cabbage, etc. — cdl 
Kail-yard, a vegetable garden 
— cdl-geard 
Keel, ruddle — C. c\l 
Kebbuck, cheese — C. cdbag 
Keeps, stakes ; “ playing for 
keeps P playing for stakes, an 
Obi. use of the word keep 

“ Them that losses greets. 

Them that wuns keeps." 

The keeps played for by 
Galloway boys were often 
gurzons., i.e. half buttons. 
Ken, know — cait 
Kenned, known — canned 
Kenspeckle, conspicuous, easily 
recognised — can-specca 

“She’ll be nae mair kenspeckle than 
half-hangit Maggie Dickson, that 
cried saut mony a day after she 
had been hangit.” — ScoTT. 

Kilted, tucked up — T. upkilta 

‘ ‘ Hir skirt kiliit till hir bare knee. " 

Gavan Douglas. 

Kin, kind — cy 7 t 
Kirk, church — cyrc 
Kirn, churn — cyrn 
Knowe, hillock — cnoll 
Kye, cows — cp 

Laddie, boy, lad — leode 
Land, house, or cluster of 
houses containing different 
tenements 

‘ ' You were born ... in the blue 
room of Stevenlaw’s Land in the 
Townhead of Middlemas.” — ScoTT, 

Lane, alone 
Lang, long — lang 


286 


GLOSSARY 


Lave, the rest, remainder — Idf 
Lear, learning — Idre 
Lee, falsehood — O.F. ley 
Leecdnsin’, licensing a divinity 
student, after passing his 
examinations, to preach 
Leet, a nomination of a few out 
of a number of candidates 
with a view to elect one — 
Meat 

Leevin’, living 
Lick, a blow 

“ When he committed all these tricks, 
For which he well deserved his licks. " 
Forbes. 

Lifted their lines, removed to 
another church 

Liggate, a gate so swung as to 
shut itself — Mid-geat 
Lintie, linnet 

Loan, Loaning, lane, narrow 
roadway between fields — T. 
Ion 

Loons, idle lads 

“Ye’re but a pack o’ traitor loons." 

Burns. 

Lowe, flame — lig., lige 
Lowsed, to loosen, gave up 
working 

Lowsin time, time when work 
is over ; referring to the time 
when the horses are loosened 
from the plough, etc. — losian^ 
to lose 

Lug mark, ear mark — T. h/gg. 
Lum hat, chimney-pot hat — lum, 
probably from ledma^ a ray of 
light ; in olden times there 
was seldom any light in a 
small house but what was 
admitted by a hole in the 
roof, where the smoke escaped 


I Mair, more — 7nare 
Makkin’, making — 77tac, make 
Man, a servant — Tnan, a ser- 
vant, a vassal 

Manse, parsonage — O.F. 7nonse 
March-dyke, wall or fence sepa- 
rating two properties — Tncerc- 
dic 

Maun, must — T. 7nun 
Maws, sea-gulls — F. 7naage 
Micht, might — 77tcEg6 
Misdoot, doubt : 7nis in Sc. as 
in A.S. is prefixed to words 
implying defect, unlikeness, 
eg. 7nisli7npan (Sc., mis- 
lippen), to disappoint, not to 
go rightly ; 77tisl6r (Sc. mis- 
leard), untaught 

“ I hae a misdoot that a’s no right 
and sound wi’ her mair than wi’ 
him.” — G alt. 

Mislippen, disappoint, neglect 
— liJ7ipan.^ to happen 

“ I haflins think his een hae him mis- 
lippen d. ” — Tannahill. 

Mony, many — 77toni 
Mowdies, moles — dimin. of T. 

rnullwad.^ a mole 
Muckle, great, large — 77iycle 
Mune, moon — ttidna 


Na, Nae, no — tid 
Neest, next — nyhst 
Neeves, fists — T. 7taeve.^ knaef 
Neyther, neither, 7id^or 

No, not 770 

Nocht, nothing — ndht 
Noo, now — 7iii 
Nowt, cattle — nyten 


GLOSSARY 287 


Onstead, farm buildings — on^ 
with, among, and stede^ a 
place 

Onusual, unusual : on in Sc. as 
in A.S. is often used as “ un ” 
to denote privation, as on- 
braw^ ugly ; onkenned^ un- 
known, etc. 

Ony, any — cenig 
Oor, our, lire 
Oor, hour 
Oot, out — 

Ower, over — ouer 
Oxter, armpit ; sometimes used 
for the arm — oxtan 

‘ ‘ Lads oxter lassies without fear, 

Or dance like wud. ” — Mayne. 

Pack, intimate, familiar — T. 
packe 

" And pack and thick as tods could 
be.” — N ichol. 

Pat, Pit, Pittin, put 
Pawmies, strokes on the hand — 
F. paumer. See Taws. 
Peerie, a spinning top — Obi. 
from peru^ or F. poire, a 
pear ; a peerie being pear- 
shaped 

Pend, an arch, archway to a 
“ close,” improperly used for 
the close itself 

Pit and gallows, an ancient 
right belonging to barons, of 
having on their ground a pit 
for drowning women, and a 
gallows for hanging men, con- 
victed of crimes. The T. 
put ende galghe refers to the 
same privilege 
Pitawties, potatoes 
Plantin’, a plantation 


Plenishing, household furniture 
Ploy, amusement 

“ Aye wark an' nae ploy, maks Jock 
a dull boy.” — Sc. Prov. 

Pokemantie, portmanteau 
Probationer, a divinity student, 
who, after passing his univer- 
sity examinations, and being 
tried by a presbytery, is 
licensed to preach 
Prood, proud — prut 
Pund, pound 

Pyowes, small pyramids of 
moistened gunpowder made 
by boys for fireworks 

Rampage, to rage, prancing 
about in a furious way — from 
ram, and Sc. pauge, to prance, 
to prance like a ram 
Ram-stam, precipitate, thought- 
less 

‘ ‘ The hairum-scairum ram-stam boys. ’ ’ 
Burns. 

Randy, riotous — from ran, spoil, 
plunder, and \eaf, a thief, or 
C. rannataich 

Raxing, stretching, reaching 

“Ne’er rax aboon your reach.” 

Sc. Prov. 

Reed, red — read 
Reek, smoke — rec 
Richt, right — riht 
Riggin, ridge of a house — hryeg 
Riggs, ridges — rig 
Routin’, bellowing — hrutan 
Rowan-tree, mountain-ash — 
from run, magical, mysterious. 
The rowati-tree is believed 


288 


GLOSSARY 


to be a protection against 
witches 

‘ ' But I have tied red thread about 
the bairns' throats, and forby given 
ilk ane of them a riding wand of 
rowan-tree; and I wish to know 
of your reverence, if there be ony- 
thing mair that a lone woman can 
do in the matter of ghaists and 
fairies ? ” — Scott. 

Sair, sore — sdr 
Saugh, willow — sealh 

“On the saugh-trees our harpes wee 
hang 

When they required vs ane sang.” 
Met. Ver. of Psa. , century. 

Scadded, scalded 
Scaling, dispersing — T. skil 

“ Ou, I was just Stan’ in’ till the kirk 
had scaled." — Dean Ramsay. 

Scartin’, scratching— O. F. escart 
Schule, school — sceoula 
Scunner, to shrink, shudder — 
from scunmmg^ an abomina- 
tion 

Scunnered, disgusted 

“A taid may sit on her coffin the 
day, and she can never scunner 
when he croaks. ” — Scott. 

Sharin, dung — scearn 
Shoos, scares — to shoo fowls, 
etc., to scare them away 
Short leet, see Leet 
Sib, related to by blood — sib 
Sic, Siccan, such — swilc 
Sidle, to move in a shy sheepish 
way — sidefull.^ bashful 
Siller, money — scolfer 
Sins, since — si'6 
Sirce, an exclamation = Sirs ! 
Skelloch, a scream — T. skella 
Slichted, slighted — T. slichted 


Slockened, to allay thirst — T. 
slokjt 

“What ails ye at the mist, sir? it 
weets the sod, it slackens the yowes, 
and it’s God’s wull. ” 

Dean Ramsay. 

Sna, snow — snd 
Snips and clippets, small por- 
tions 

Soor-dook, buttermilk 
Soorocks, sorrel — T. saurach 
Sough, a low murmuring sound 
as of wind through trees — 
swogan^ to sound as wind 

‘ ‘ My heart for fear gae sough for sough. ’ ' 
Burns. 

Speaned, weaned — from spatta.^ 
teats of a cow 

Speer ) to ask, asking — 

Speerin’ J spiran 
Stoor, Stour, dust — O.F. estour 
Sune, soon — sona 
Swine ree, pig-stye — from 

raeces, a dwelling 
Syne, again, then, afterwards — 
scette 

“ And syne Mess John beyond ex- 
pression. 

Fell foul o’ me.” — B urns. 

Synes, Synds, washes, cleans 

“ Tent well a lass o’ beauty flush. 
There sinding out her duds. ” 

Morison. 

Taen, taken — T. taen 
Tairger, tiger 

Taws, a “ penitential strap,” 
used by “ dominies ” by 
applying it to the palms of 
erring pupils ; the strokes so 
given are called pahnies 


GLOSSARY 


289 


Tenpenny, an elementary gram- 
mar, costing tenpence 
Terrible bonny, very pretty — 
an augmentative very com- 
monly used in Sc. and York- 
shire 

Thocht, thought — "^oht 
Thrapple, windpipe, throat — 
\rot-bolla 

Thrawn, distorted, cross-grained 
— \rawen 

Througb-gaun, active, thorough 
— \urh-gangen 

Thruch-stane, flat grave-stone 
— \urh-stcBn 
Till, to — til 

Toon, town — Obi. from iuun^ a 
yard, enclosed place 
Toorock, a small tower — F. tour 
and T. ock^ a diminutive 
Trysted, betrothed, appointed 
— Obi. from iruwa^ to trust 

*' It is the wish’d, the trysted hour.” 

Burns. 

Twa, two — iwd 
Twal, twelve — twelf 
Twasume, two in company — 
twd-sum 

Unco, great, strange — und^ 

Wa’, wall — wah 
Wad, would — wolde 
Wae, sorry — wea 

“ Waes unite faes. ” — Sc. Prov. 

Wale, a number — T. wal 

“ There’s nae waile o’ wigs on Mun- 
rimmon Moor.” — D ean Ramsay. 

Wame, the belly — wainb 

“Little odds between a feast and a 
fu’ wame." — Sc. Prov. 


War, were 
Wark, work — wcerc 
Wat, wet — west 
Waur, worse — wcerra 
Wean, child — Obi. from 7venan^ 
to wean 

Wee, little — C. veagh 
Whaup, curlew — from a 

bewailing cry ; similar to the 
cry of the bird 
Whaur, where — hwar 
Wheen, a few, a number — 
hwene. 

“ Ou, he just keeps a curn o' quainies 
and a whetn widdyfous, and gars 
them fissle and loup, and mak 
murgeons, to please the great fowk. ” 
(An Aberdeen man’s description of 
an opera company. ) 

Dean Ramsay. 

Whiles, sometimes — while 
Whurlie, whirling 
Whurls, whorls, cup and ring 
markings on the rocks, 
numerous in parts of Gal- 
loway 

Woman-muckle, womanhood. 

‘ ‘ The elf, by anointing the crown of 
her head and the palms of both 
hands with a very fragrant oil, 
gart her grow woman-muckle in 
twa-three days.” — Edin. Mag. 

Wraite, wrote 
Wrang, wrong — wrang 
Writer, a solicitor 
Wunda, window — vindue 
Wunner, wonder — wunder 

Yae, one 
Yer, your 
Yersel, yourself 


290 


GLOSSARY 


Yett, gate 
Yin, one — T. hinn 
Yince, once — from T. hm7i 
Yird, earth — eard 


Yowe, ewe — eowu 

‘ ‘ Ca’ the yowes to the knowes, 


Ca’ them whare the heather growes, 
Ca’ them whare the burnie rowes — • 


My bonnie dearie ! ” — Burns. 


Stickit Minister, a probationer who has failed 
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See Probationer. 

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out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down the 
pulpit-stairs, trampling upon the old women who 
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